Tell me what the world was like when you were 18 and I will tell you how you see things. Values and attitudes are shaped by personal experience and background.

I was born in a divided Germany in the '50s. My mother was a refugee from the East and I came to England in 1974 - at a time when the country was in economic decline and political turmoil.

Two events that stick in my mind are the Cuban missile crisis and the Berlin Airlift. British and American pilots, who only a few years earlier had been dropping bombs to defeat Adolf Hitler, staged an almost year-long operation to bring food and humanitarian support to the city. It is still regarded as one of the most extraordinary logistic efforts of modern times - and to me it also proves the enduring power of ideals.

I have been shaped by the Cold War, but also by tales of what it is like to sit in a cellar hoping that the Americans get to you before the Russians. I grew up convinced that my country of birth would probably forever be divided and that large parts of Europe would never become democracies. I always wondered whether the Russian tanks that had invaded Czechoslovakia would stop at the Bavarian border.

I had accepted that some things just can't be changed and the best you can do is to manage the situation.

But things turned out differently. Dictatorships in Greece, Spain and Portugal were toppled and with the robust help of their neighbouring states these countries became fully-functioning parliamentary democracies. The Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union collapsed, Germany was reunited and by 2004 eight former communist countries had joined the European Union.