Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Twenty years ago that insult to all free men, the Berlin Wall came crashing down and Communism itself followed shortly after.

I was in Berlin while the wall was still up and it was like someone had jammed an icicle in the clockwork of history. It not only divided one of the world's capitols, but it gave the lie to a murderous system that had to imprison its own citizens from fleeing the "workers' paradise". I remember Berlin as being like a hospital patient forever trying to survive on an IV after being hacked in two with every infection and necrosis imaginable seeping into the wound. The old John le Carré novels weren't that far off. Tell young people today about all those who ran the kill zone, dug tunnels, built balloons or squeezed into all sorts of bizarre hiding places in order to reach the West and freedom and they'd never believe you.

The Wall is gone now. May the memory off all those who defied it and those who struggled so hard to tear it down never be forgotten.