Episode 102

He’s a top climate scientist and one who challenges what Doctor Johnson called “the grimmest dictatorship of them all: the dictatorship of the prevailing orthodoxy.” Most others are ranged against him, but that was also the fate of Galileo. So, facing not the Spanish inquisition but the Sputnik inquisition this week is Piers Corbyn.

And in Part two, we take a look at that seminal year, 1956, when Britain’s imperial pretensions came to a crushing end, the Soviet Union denounced Stalin, invaded Hungary and the US formally declared itself the unchallengeable leader of what it called ’the free world’. Francis Beckett has chronicled the year in mesmerizing detail, which is why we asked him back on board the Sputnik.

Follow @RT_sputnik