David Fairhall Author

As the Guardian's Defence Correspondent, David Fairhall spent many years reporting on every aspect of the Cold War, as well as the hotter wars that erupted along the way. He also specialised in the wider controversies - political, military and often environmental - which surrounded nuclear technology. During the 1980s this led to Greenham Common, where he covered the women's impassioned, unprecedented mass protest against US cruise missiles from both sides of the perimeter wire. His own military service was as a Russian interpreter in the Royal Navy, prompting his first book, Russia Looks to the Sea.