When Nixon Met Mao [audio 5x15min]

This week's BBC"Book of the Week" is Margaret Macmillan's Seize the Hour, an extraordinary account of the historic day when Nixon Met Mao. In February 1972, President Richard Nixon amazed the world with a trip to China. He was the first US President to go there -- and after the long freeze in relations after World War II it was like a visit to the far side of the moon, but it was also a brilliant stroke of policy. Nixon's meeting with Mao was not just a great historical event, the visit is a great story too, filled with extraordinary people: Nixon himself; Mao, frail and erratic; and the twin machiavellis Chou En-lai and Henry Kissinger. And it illuminates the famous period of"Nixinger diplomacy" during which the American President and his National Security Advisor went to extraordinary lengths to keep their negotiations secret not just from the general public but from their own State Department.