The Rest is Noise: The Art of Fear

Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich. Photograph: Underwood & Underwood/Corbis

Shostakovich working on his famous Seventh ('Leningrad') Symphony in 1941. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Sergei Eisenstein, film director Photograph: Ronald Grant

1938. Soviet actor Nikolay Cherkasov on the set of Aleksandr Nevskiy (Alexander Nevsky), directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein and Dmitri Vasilyev Photograph: Mosfilm/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis

Josef Stalin delivers a speech in Moscow in April 1935. Photograph: AP

A still from Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl, which chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. Photograph: Ronald Grant

16 September 1935: German dictator Adolf Hitler salutes Nazi soldiers during a parade in Nuremberg. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

German film maker Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003) and cameraman Walter Frentz at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

Russian composer Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953). Photograph: Underwood & Underwood/Corbis

French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), photographed in March 1952. Photograph: Lipnitzki/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

German chancellor Adolf Hitler accompanied by Joseph Goebbels at the 1938 Nazi Art Exhibition, during the 'Day of German Art' celebrations at Munich. The exhibition included a five-mile parade representing 2,000 years of German culture. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

Adolf Hitler attends the opera in Salzburg City Theatre. Photography by Atelier Ellinger, 1939. Photograph: Imagno/Getty Images

Dmitri Shostakovich, Russian composer, (front, in glasses) during the Siege of Leningrad, 1941 Photograph: Alamy

2 January 1950, Moscow, Russian leader Josef Stalin pictured at his 70th birthday celebrations in the Bolshoi Theatre receiving gifts of flowers from members of the Moscow Young Pioneers. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

General Secretary of the Communist Party of USSR Stalin with his retinue, May 1938. Photograph: Mondadori/Getty Images

George Orwell, British writer and journalist, at a typewriter Photograph: Mondadori/Getty Images