Quotes from Stephen Walker

The time was 08.27. Up on his platform Ivanovsky patted the Vostok one last time for luck. We loved our Vostok, he wrote later. We loved it with that love that comes with an inevitable parting. Then he descended to the ground.

Gagarin had just flown around the world. Now he needed a horse and cart. To those familiar with only slightly later TV footage of NASA spacecraft returning to earth [...] Gagarin's return is in a league of its own, an exercise of the surreal with a uniquely Russian twist.

trial in Germany raised questions about his knowledge of the Dora concentration camp inmates used to assemble his V-2 missiles in horrific conditions. In 1976 a proposal to award him a Presidential Medal of Freedom was rejected because of his Nazi background. 'He has given valuable service to