If you're under 40 and you're listening to this, the chances are that you have a very blurry picture of what life was like under Communism before the fall of the Berlin Wall. If you know older people who travelled there, you may have heard stories of the long queues for bread, or of the pervading sense of being listened to and followed by the security services. But while there are thousands of books and documentaries constantly revisiting Germany under Hitler, far less is available about life under Stalin. And much of what there is about the Soviet Union itself. Anne Applebaum's new book, Iron Curtain, the crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56, is one attempt to change that. It's specifically about what used to be called the Eastern Bloc, and it focuses particularly on Poland, East Germany and Hungary. I started by asking Anne Applebaum about her own travels and memories of Eastern Europe before the collapse of the Berlin Wall.