Marilyn

August 1962

By: James Philip

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Welcome to the Timeline 10/27/62 prequel series COUNTDOWN TO WAR starting in October 1961 and concluding when the world goes mad during the last weekend in October 1962.

MARILYN is the eleventh of thirteen books in this series which will be released at monthly intervals between 27th October 2023 and 27th October 2024.

It is August 1962. A train of events which has been slowly, menacingly coalescing ever since October 1961 is beginning to play out.

The end game is nigh.

OPERATION ANADYR is morphing from a reckless whim in Nikita Khrushchev’s fevered imagination to a massive, clandestine thermonuclear gamble which is weakening the defence of the Soviet motherland.

The missile sites are under construction, the ships are sailing from Russian ports, thermonuclear warheads being entrained for transportation to the docks and in Washington DC, the Administration – distracted by the holiday season and a welter of problems of its own – is sleepwalking…

Historians are frequently astonished by the thought processes – or the lack of the same – of so-called ‘great men’. The capacity of leaders to believe their own rhetoric in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary is, it seems, ubiquitous down the ages. What we learn is that bad things do not always happen because bad people will them; sometimes good, stupid, and naïve men just misread the runes…

Late summer heralds a quickening of the path to war and the crisis is much closer than anybody can imagine.

The ticking is getting ever-louder as the clock has reaches two minutes to midnight.