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'Hanoi' Jane Fonda shakes hands with Robert McNamara at Hay

Nick Higham reports from the Hay Festival in 2005, as the two former adversaries meet for the first time.

Robert McNamara, who as US Secretary of Defense under John F. Kennedy oversaw the military build-up in Vietnam, became a hate figure to anti-war activists.

A scion of Hollywood royalty and Oscar winner, Jane Fonda was a political firebrand in the 1960s. She was labelled 'Hanoi Jane' when she outraged America by visiting North Vietnam in 1972 at the height of the conflict, being pictured with Vietcong anti-aircraft batteries.

McNamara quit Lyndon Johnson's administration in 1968 over the bombing of North Vietnam, and later expressed contrition for his part in the war - notably in an Oscar-winning documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, released in 2003.

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