It’s been extraordinarily good fun to talk to Ian Sanders of the Cold War Conversations podcast about my times as student and reporter in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe through the 70s and 80s, and here’s the final episode, focusing on Romania.

As Ian writes on the shownotes, Mark Brayne worked as a Reuters & BBC journalist during the Cold War.

This time we are in Romania in December 1989 where nationwide demonstrations, shootings and death over the course of roughly a week led the Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu to flee the capital city on 22 December with his wife.

We hear the challenges of being a journalist in what was effectively a war zone without the risk assessments and protective gear of the present day.

Previous week, we explored my Stasi files.

In this episode we talk to Mark Brayne again in a wide ranging chat about his career as a Reuters & BBC journalist including details of his Stasi file, his time in the Soviet Union, Hungary & Poland as well as the perils of editing analogue tape in a non-digital age.

Among his interviewees we talk about the Dalai Lama, Lech Walesa as well the ordinary people of the Warsaw Pact countries.