Special Offer for Express readers

Get 10% off Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 by Max Hastings (Harpercollins, £30) out 29 September. To pre-order for £27 see expressbookshop.com or call 020 3176 3832.

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was one of history’s most perilous events, when the threat of a nuclear war between the US and USSR loomed large. Hastings’s graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British CND activists, who recount the nail-biting 13 days when Armageddon beckoned.