For the past 9,000 years or so the world has experienced an interglacial period, with (in terms of geological time) an anomalously warm and stable climate. But how stable are interglacials, and what processes might bring them to a sudden close? Evidence from a 53-metre-long sediment core, retrieved from the Bermuda Rise in the western North Atlantic, now gives us the most detailed picture yet of events during the previous interglacial. The results date the period concerned to between 129,000 and 119,000 years ago. Most notably, however, its termination seems to have been marked by a sudden reduction in the ocean 'conveyor' circulation which today carries ocean heat north from the tropics and warms much of Europe.