Atomium

An iron molecule, 100m tall and scaled-up 165billion times, was the future in ’58

- DELWYN MALLETT

'IN A NOTE DATED 3 June 1954, the Belgian Ambassador in London conveyed an invitation to Her Majesty's Government of Great Britain: an invitation to take part in a new World's Fair, which the Belgians were calling the "Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles 1958" Thus begins Jonathan Coe's novel Expo 58, the most surprising legacy of the first World's Fair since New York's in 1939/40, and the first to be held after World War Two.

The exposition opened in April 1958 and closed six months later, more than 41million visitors having passed through its gates. Coe was inspired to write his novel after a Belgian journalist chose to conduct a 2010 interview with him in what had been the centrepiece of the Expo, the hitherto-unknown-to-Coe Atomium. Fascinated by this extraordinary structure, he fashioned a comic Cold War espionage novel around it, largely confined to the location and duration of the Expo.