Who Paid The Piper? | Granta

  • Published: 04/04/2000
  • ISBN: 9781862073272
  • 129x30mm
  • 544 pages

Who Paid The Piper?

Frances Stonor Saunders

During the Cold War, writers and artists were faced with a huge challenge. In the Soviet world, they were expected to turn out works that glorified militancy, struggle and relentless optimism. In the West, freedom of expression was vaunted as liberal democracy’s most cherished possession. But such freedom could carry a cost. This book documents the extraordinary energy of a secret campaign in which some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West became instruments – whether they knew it or not, whether they liked it or not – of America’s secret service.

Frances Stonor Saunders has almost single-handedly started off a branch of sub-history; the cultural cold war. Who Paid The Piper? is an extraordinarily good book and I do recommend it to anyone who's remotely interested in the period

Ian McEwan, author of Sweet Tooth, BBC Radio 4

This is the fascinating story of the vast post-war Kulturkampf, the Cold War conflict over cultural values and ideologies amid which several literary and cultural generations grew up ... a crucial story about the dangerous, compromising energies and manipulation of an entire and a very recent age

Malcolm Bradbury, The Times

A major work of investigative history

Edward W. Said

The Author

Frances Stonor Saunders is the author of the best-selling Who Paid the Piper?, a cultural history of the Cold War that has been translated into ten languages and was awarded the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Memorial Prize. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the New Statesman and Areté. She lives in London.

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Frances Stonor Saunders on Granta.com

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