S7 Ep41: Summer Special: Stalin’s Englishman with Andrew Lownie

[00:00:01] Due to the themes of this podcast, listener discretion is advised. Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords. This is Secrets and Spies.

[00:00:26] Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics, and intrigue. This podcast is produced and hosted by Chris Carr. On today's special podcast I am joined by author and literary agent Andrew Lownie and we discuss his book Stalin's Englishman, The Lives of Guy Burgess. Guy Burgess was famously a member of the Cambridge Five Spiring, which was a Cold War spiring

[00:00:52] in which British students were recruited by the Russian intelligence services and those students would rise up through the ranks of British intelligence. Guy Burgess in many ways arguably might have been one of the most effective members of the Cambridge Five. That's what this interview sort of reveals. So today's episode is actually a very interesting interview. I really enjoyed this interview. And this interview is actually from my archives. It was recorded back in May 2016.

[00:01:18] And the reason why it's been sitting in my archives, it was actually recorded for a different podcast, which I used to be a part of, and that podcast sadly no longer exists. And so I felt it was a shame that this interview was sort of just sitting in this archive, gathering dust, so to speak. So I reached out to Andrew just to ask if he would be happy for me to re-air it, because Andrew actually is going to be coming on the podcast later this year to discuss his book The Traitor King.

[00:01:47] And until then, I felt that this would actually be quite a nice episode to stick out during our summer break. And so that's why I'm re-airing this interview today. And on that note, the podcast will be returning on the 9th of September. We will have a brand new espresso martini and an extra shot for Patreon subscribers. I just want to say a huge thank you to our listeners over this last year, and our new Patreon subscribers and our existing Patreon subscribers. Your support helps keep this show going.

[00:02:16] We're now entering our eighth season, which is pretty amazing. So the podcast is seven years old now. I had no idea when I started this podcast seven years ago that it would keep going like this. But my plan is to keep this podcast going for the foreseeable future. I'm really enjoying doing it, really enjoying working with Matt, and looking at the numbers. It sounds like you listeners out there are enjoying our content too, which is fantastic. So we're going to keep producing episodes.

[00:02:43] And if you wish to support the podcast, you can go to patreon.com forward slash secrets and spies. You can select the level that works for you, and you'll either get a set of free Secrets and Spies coasters or a Secrets and Spies cup. And you'll get access to our special Patreon exclusive show, Extra Shot, that comes out twice a month. So without further ado, let's get going. I hope you're enjoying your summer. I'm certainly enjoying mine, and I look forward to coming back in September. So until then, I hope you enjoy this episode. Take care.

[00:03:14] The opinions expressed by guests on Secrets and Spies do not necessarily represent those of the producers and sponsors of this podcast. Hello, Andrew. Thank you for joining us to discuss your book, Stalin's Englishman, The Lives of Guy Burgess,

[00:03:42] which focuses on the infamous traitor Guy Burgess, who was part of the Cambridge Five. Our meeting today is rather timely, as we've just passed a key date in Burgess's life, which was the 25th of May. Did you do anything to mark the occasion? Well, by chance, I happened to be speaking at the Charleston Literary Festival. And literally at the time, about eight o'clock, that they would have been possibly passing the end of the road on their journey from Tatsfield through to Southampton. It was very exciting to think, you know, that would have been going on 65 years ago. Yeah, that's brilliant.

[00:04:11] So you've now got a new edition of the book out, which is paperback and an e-book, if I'm right. Is there any kind of key new information that's come to light? Well, I think there's several things. It's really detailed. But the interesting thing is in my original hardback, I said that the official story that they were only discovered on Monday after they left didn't ring true. Because I had evidence from an MI5 officer saying that they'd been clocked on the Friday night and reported back to MI5 headquarters. I had confirmation from Arthur Martin, another MI5 officer.

[00:04:41] And then Jane Williams, who was working for Churchill, Lady Williams, working for Churchill at Chartwell on the Saturday, reported a call from the duty officer at the Foreign Office. And I assumed that when the files were released that they would address this problem. And they haven't.

[00:04:57] So I think there's still a big mystery of actually when the authorities knew, whether it is Monday, as they continue to claim, or whether, you know, these people who spoke to me, who give a slightly different version of events, and censor right. And is there still discussion about the actual route they took as well on their escape? I think there is, yes. I mean, because of the cipher traffic that was recorded and was recorded in Guy Liddell's diary, I think that the version that he gave originally is probably the right one.

[00:05:27] They went to Paris, and then they went via Bern and Prague and on to Moscow that way. Are there any other key stories that have cropped up that maybe have stood out for you as you've been resumed? Well, I think it confirmed things that I'd found originally that no one had known about. For example, his affair with Clarissa Churchill, and that they were engaged. The affair with Esther Whitfield, Philby's secretary and mistress, and there's clearly correspondence there that confirms that.

[00:05:53] We get a lot of detail about what happened in Moscow because the MI5 were intercepting his letters back, particularly to his mother. So there's a lot more detail there. We have a much clearer sense of the panic in Whitehall when they fled, and all the investigations and all the interviews. Though interestingly, quite a lot of people who were interviewed, like Lord Rothschild, his wife, and others, those interviews have not been released.

[00:06:19] And I think what was disappointing was that about 20% of the material that was released was redacted or retained. I discovered a file in the National Archives where they were looking at what was in the Burgess files under the 30-year-old. This is 1982. And there's a list of 200 files itemising what it consists of. So, for example, we have interviews between Hoover and Silito, and that material has not been released.

[00:06:44] So I think there's a lot more that's been kept back, and I hope that the government will release more stuff. I've certainly been trying since October to get stuff released under the Freedom of Information Act and not had much success. And why do you think they're holding that kind of information back? Is it just to save embarrassment for people who are still alive, or is there something else to it? Well, I don't think there's many people still alive. I mean, 65 years. I mean, even if they were, you know, 30 then, they would have to be 95 now. I think it's embarrassment.

[00:07:13] I think there was a cover-up right from the very beginning, and that that cover-up continues. I mean, I think it's extraordinary that it's only really when the story went public, and on the 7th of June, because of a leak, that anything seems to have really been done. And they went through the motions of doing things. I think they were allowed to escape, just as Philby was allowed to escape, just as people like Cairncross and Blunt were given immunity.

[00:07:37] And were the services sort of scared of maybe a trial and information coming out about incompetence, maybe? My problem was that they couldn't put them on trial because they didn't have the evidence they could use in court. A lot of the material, for example, identified McLean had come from Venona decrypts, which they couldn't use. Burgess was always taunting them because he knew that they couldn't put him on trial because they didn't have evidence that would stand up in court. I think also it's embarrassment. A lot of people got very close to Burgess, who were then involved in investigating him.

[00:08:06] People like Dick White and Guy Little. And I think that's one of the things. And lots of people like Gladwin Jeb, people in the Foreign Office who were his great mentors, or it was just too embarrassing. The fact that he'd got away with it, having led this pretty promiscuous and dissolute life. And he should never really have got the security clearance that he did. Yeah. And was there a fear about maybe the Americans' reaction to having a mole within the service?

[00:08:32] Absolutely. The Americans were furious. And that was one of the great consequences of the flight, that they refused to share atomic energy information, nuclear secrets. And when Sillito went across there in June to try and explain to the Americans, he went with Arthur Martin, who was known to be the best liar in the office, is the phrase. And I think what happened was, you know, the FBI weren't talking to the CIA, who weren't talking to the State Department. No one was pulling information. Everyone was trying to sort of cover themselves.

[00:08:59] And that was true here. MI5 and MI6 and the Foreign Office, again, were not sharing information. They all just wanted this problem to go away. And when the white paper came out in 1955, it was called the whitewash paper because it was blatantly a tissue of lies. So there are still gaps in Burgess's story, aren't there? Well, yes, there's still some mysteries. Again, the official story is that he was recruited into British intelligence in 1937.

[00:09:25] Were there references in the files to him working pre that period for Grand and Section D? There are reports in the papers of him going to meetings in Switzerland that we've not known about. The line is that he never served in the information research department. And yet I've got interviews with people who say they work alongside him.

[00:09:46] So I think there's still some real gaps that we need to fill exactly what he was doing, both immediately before the war and in that period in the late 40s. And when we spoke to you last, you were sort of having battles with the official archivists. I'm assuming, is that relationship still kind of tricky? Yes. I mean, they banned me. The Knowledge Management Department of the Foreign Office have banned me from putting more than one request every three months. Wow.

[00:10:14] I've reported them to my MP, who's written to the Minister David Lidington. I've got two cases against the Information Commissioner, which is what's called the first tier tribunal, which goes to court on 29th of June. So, yeah, they don't like me there. And one of the things I've discovered, and I'm hounding them on, is that the revelation that they routinely destroy papers and no public record is ever kept. I mean, they keep a record, but they do not make available all the papers they destroyed.

[00:10:44] Because I'm hearing from a lot of people that actually, rather than put stuff into the National Archives or retain it, they just destroy it. Gosh. And is it, yeah, I suppose there's a whole list of potential reasons why they do that, but that's mad. Is it like that, it's quite a different situation in America, am I right in thinking? Americans are better, absolutely. They're much more, they provide lists of destroyed documents. They're much more open.

[00:11:07] I mean, the problem I found with America is that they have to always ask permission from, if it relates to British matters, they have to ask the British. Ah. And therefore, quite a lot of stuff is kept back. Because I'm very interested in a man called Wilfred Mann, who I named in the hardback as a Russian spy. This is the man named by Andrew Boyle in The Climate of Treason, who's recruited in the 1930s and then turned and played back. Again, very interesting. Nothing in the new releases on Wilfred Mann.

[00:11:33] And yet I found material on him in these private papers like Patrick Riley's autobiography, unpublished autobiography. So, I mean, there's still lots of stories, I think, to come out that they're not coming clean. Yeah, that's not good. I mean, you know, you're an intelligence historian. It's not like you're some sort of random person online just sort of trying to dig up dirt or anything. So it must be, is a big barrier for you and your... It's frustrating because I want to tell, I spent 30 years working on this. I want to tell the story as accurately as I can, as fully as I can.

[00:12:00] And if you don't have all the papers, then you can't tell the story fully. And I think one of the reasons that we've had so many maverick characters writing rubbish history is because the documents haven't been there to back anything up so they can say anything they want. Yeah, yeah. And they can just sort of fill in the gaps of their imagination. Exactly. And I think that's what's happening. People put two and two together and got, you know, seven. Yeah. Gosh, no, it's not good. The Russian archives, I'm sure, have a wealth of information that, you know, would be great to exist. They do. They do.

[00:12:27] I mean, you know, we thank God goodness in the 1980s some of the archives were opened and they did these deals with American publishers and released a lot of stuff because that's the only hard evidence really that we have on what was taken and the whole recruitment and all that. I mean, sadly, I think at the moment we're not going to, you know, there's no chance of that happening. I mean, I continue to try and get into archives there and get researchers in. But when I certainly talked to a man called Sergei Kondrachev who ran Burgess in Moscow,

[00:12:54] he claimed that there were yards and yards of files still to be released. And when I said, weren't you worried that when Burgess and McLean went and put suspicion onto Philby that you were jeopardizing the network, he said we had plenty more. So I think, you know, are we going to see more on the Oxford ring? Are there going to be new spies revealed? I think one of the fascinating things is that the Russians numbered the spies in order and there are big gaps between the recruitment of people like Burgess and McLean, even though they're only months apart.

[00:13:24] So there are many more spies, you know, that are revealed by the Matrokin archive. People like Chauffeur and Professor and Poet, Attila, we don't know their identities. And so we can only hope perhaps through more decrypts from Venona, more material perhaps coming from Matrokin, some of it has been held back, and maybe more stuff from the Russian or British archives. Now, did I hear you right? You met the man who, one of the men who ran Burgess. Yes, absolutely. I met a man, he also ran George Blake.

[00:13:53] He was a KGB general called Sergei Kondrachev, who I met in Moscow. I also met Yuri Modin, who was Burgess's handler. We did myself and my Russian researchers in eight interviews with him before he died. He always liked a bottle of whiskey being brought to him. And he was very interesting. They were both great admirers of Burgess. And this was where I learnt that, you know, they regarded Burgess as the most important of the Cambridge group, which was a revelation, I think, to me and I think surprised people when the book came out.

[00:14:22] Because when I started the book, it wasn't to prove anything. It was really because nothing had been done up till then on him, really a proper biography. And also he was such a fascinating character because the range of people he knew, you know, Lucien Freud, Frederick Ashton, Lawrence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, George Orwell, Ian Forster, an amazing roll call. I mean, even the sort of people coming to see him in Moscow included Jan Morris, Graham Green and Stephen Spender. Yeah, wow. So we'll come back to Burgess in a moment.

[00:14:51] So I'm just intrigued about sort of how you went about, you know, ending up meeting the agents who ran him. And how did that come about? Well, I mean, I just spent a lot of time, you know, tracing people, working through contacts. I had a fixer who helped me engage, a guy who knew the intelligence world, who helped me meet people. My researchers even found the guard who had guarded him when he first went to Kubashev on the Volga when he first arrived in Russia in 1951.

[00:15:21] I talked to Rafina Philby. She actually revealed to me for the paper acquisition that actually Philby and Burgess hadn't met. I wasn't quite sure. They'd been kept apart in 1963. But yeah, just it's amazing, actually, if you start digging. I think there were about 100 people I spoke to. I mean, even the other day, I spoke to a cadet at the military academy in Charleston who had seen him give this famous speech in February 51 when he was so drunk and when he got sacked. It's amazing. And what era did these interviews take place? Was this the late 80s, early 90s?

[00:15:50] Well, they began in 1985. So I talked to people like Nigel Burgess, his brother, Michael Strait, the spy, people like Nick Elliott who confronted Philby. Then there was a range of interviews in the 1990s when I carried on. And these are often his school friends, people who've been with him at Cambridge. Because even, let's say, in 1999, they were only in their late 80s. And there were quite a lot of them around. Quite a lot of people who recruited fellow communists.

[00:16:16] And then foreign office colleagues, even people who saw him in Moscow, a lot of the foreign correspondents who knew him there were alive. But there's still a dozen people who are still alive. I met a man the other day who he tried to pick up on the boat going to America and who he became very friendly with. I've been talking to a 95-year-old woman who met him at parties even before the Second World War, who was part of his sort of set.

[00:16:44] So it's amazing who's around. There's a man called Jeremy Hutchinson who's in his 90s, who was his sister married, Victor Rothschild. And he knew the circle. So it's amazing what's there. And as these files get released and you see names, you can often then go and see if you can find the people. And even if the people aren't around, sometimes their widows are around and have the stories to tell. Yeah. I suppose the files are very important as well because you want to make sure

[00:17:13] that no one's sort of, in a sense, yanking your chain a little bit, I suppose. You've got to be careful and cross-reference things as you've had these interviews with people. Yes, the great thing is you can. I mean, sometimes, I mean, a lot of the stuff isn't put down ever. I think one's got to be aware that the stuff in the archives is stuff that MI5 and the Foreign Office feel comfortable with showing. And I think because it sustains the narrative that they've created. I think also what's in MI5 documents doesn't necessarily mean they're true. It just means what MI5 thought.

[00:17:43] You know, they may have bugged someone and they may have done surveillance. That's fine. But if they're working on interviews with people and people have said things to them, they may not have told the MI5 the truth. I mean, Jack Hewitt, who was Burgess's boyfriend, admitted that he hadn't told the truth. He was interviewed about five times and he hadn't told them the full story. Yeah. So that context is very important when either looking at documents cold or the other way around when reviewing information you've got from an interview yourself. Yeah.

[00:18:10] I mean, one of the things I found was that Hewitt had given several interviews to newspapers before he died, but I also had his unpublished manuscript autobiography. Oh, wow. And that was very interesting for detail of what happened, particularly in that last week. And I don't think he had any reason to lie in the autobiography. So there was a lot of detail there that was really helpful. And these unpublished manuscripts, were they held by the family or were they in an archive somewhere? Yes, they'd been held by the family. I picked them up doing the research in 1985,

[00:18:40] of course, when Hewitt was around, and I'd had them since 1985. Gosh, that must have been amazing coming across that the first time. It must have been a good one. Yeah, wonderful stuff. I mean, even one of the things I found in the releases was Philby's original manuscript from My Silent War, written in the early 50s. The book wasn't published, of course, until 1968, with very different material to what actually appeared in My Silent War. This was written before he went to the Soviet Union. It hadn't really been, clearly the Russians had censored it.

[00:19:09] Some really interesting stuff there, particularly insights into people and coverage of events. So what was it that drew you to Burgess out of all the Cambridge Five? Because you spent a lot of time researching into it. When did this start? I started in 1985, having worked on a book on Glunt. I was drawn to him because there hadn't been a book on Burgess. The only one was the one by Tom Dryburn, written in 1956, which was Tissue of Lies. Burgess had basically taught him all sorts of rubbish. And he seemed to be the most interesting of the group. I mean, the one with the biggest hinterland,

[00:19:40] all these amazing people he knew. He'd had quite an interesting career in the Foreign Office, in the BBC, doing lots of other things. So I felt there was something to be, there was a real gap in the market. And I think I was proved right. I mean, he proved to be a far more interesting, complex, paradoxical character than I realised. And one of the things we put on the hardback was a whole series of contradictory quotes by people on him. And that's what I found.

[00:20:09] But, you know, you often had this, almost you had to create this mosaic of impressions with one person saying one thing, you know, I didn't realise he was gay and a homosexual, a drunk and a communist. Others said, you know, he was, you know, dirty and, you know, very open about his politics and his sexuality. So he presented these different faces to people at different times. And I think that's where, you know, looking at the youth in detail was really helpful. And I found a lot of stuff, records from school about him

[00:20:39] and how he became more politicised, what a conventional schoolboy he was, a corporal in the Eton OTC, how musical he'd been, how sporty he was. He was in the first 11 football, for example. So there was a completely different picture that was presented from really the picture we'd got from Andrew Boyle's book and one or two of the other books that basically just drew on the secondary literature and had done no primary research. And it was back in the 80s because you were at Cambridge yourself. And am I right remembering you organised

[00:21:09] a kind of conference about the Cambridge Five? Yeah, I did. In 1979 was since the beginning of, I think, the interest, the new interest in the Cambridge Spies because Blunt was exposed, Cairncross was exposed. It seemed to be every week, the Sunday Times had some new Cambridge Spy. And I was at Cambridge at the beginning of the 80s and got very interested by this. In fact, Hugh Sykes-Davis, who was one of the apostles with Burgess and who was on the periphery of this whole thing, was still teaching at the time. So I did this big symposium at the Union and we got amazing people.

[00:21:39] Robert Cecil, who did a book on Maclean, but had served with him in the Foreign Office, taken over from him as head of the American Department. People like Chapman Pinscher, Christopher Andrew. So all the experts, but often a lot of people who were sort of involved. And it was as a result of doing that sort of symposium that I was asked to research this book on Blunt. What a fantastic way into it. And I suppose walking through the corridors of Cambridge, it must, you know, makes it quite personal for you, I suppose. Yeah, well, I mean, you know,

[00:22:07] I was passing the staircases where they lived. You know, he was a member of the Pit Club, which was just around the corner from where I was. So you did feel their presence there. And the fact that there were people still around, like Hugh Sykes-Davis, who'd known them, you know, well, you know, made it pretty, pretty special. Yeah, that's amazing. So where does Burgess sort of sit in the history of the Cambridge Five? Was he just a buffoon or is he something much more complicated? Well, I think the conventional line was that he was the joker in the pack.

[00:22:36] He was, you know, a bit of a reprobate and quite fun, but not very important. But the message it came across, and this was from the Russians, so both, as I say, Kondrushchev, Modin, but also even Anthony Blunt said this, that he was the most important. And he was the most important because he was the moral leader who kept them together. He was the first to penetrate British intelligence. He was the only one to be a member of both MI5 and MI6. He had this important role that people don't really know much about

[00:23:04] as a courier between Chamberlain and the French Prime Minister Deladier in 1938-39. He was involved in secret propaganda organizations like the Joint Broadcasting Committee and the Information Research Department, which he, of course, betrayed. He was the right-hand man to Hector McNeil, number two to Bevan in the Foreign Office. So all the Foreign Office secrets he basically betrayed. During the four power conferences, the Russian negotiating team knew the British position before the British team knew it themselves.

[00:23:34] He was an agent of influence, both in the BBC but also in the Far East Department where he helped shape policy to recognize Red China. And then later in Moscow, everyone assumed he just got drunk and had some poxy job with a publishing firm. He was advising the Russian Foreign Ministry on British politics and personalities. He knew everyone. They'd all broadcast for him when he ran this program called The Week in Westminster. So, I mean, he was very, very important. And, you know, that was the thing that surprised me.

[00:24:03] People say, well, Philby got almost to the top of MI6 and betrayed these operations. But, you know, on the broad strategic level, I mean, this, you know, suggestion that Burgess helped shape the Nazi-Soviet pact, you know, the Ribbentrop agreement, that he, you know, clearly shaped policy during the Korean War and betrayed, you know, thousands of American troops there. So I think, you know, he's got more blood on his hands than Philby. Slightly more difficult to work it out, to do a proper audit.

[00:24:31] But I think in the big terms of the big picture, he was far more important than all of them. And also, if you think his career was, it was only 16 years, 35 to 51. And then, unless you count the years in Moscow to 63. But, I mean, he was pretty much at the top all that way through. But there were times, you know, McLean was doing nuclear secrets. But actually, I've seen the reports. They look at these reports and they say, well, actually, I knew that stuff and it wasn't that important.

[00:24:59] It was political and it was quickly out of date. So I think McLean isn't as important as people think. No. Pancross had his moment at Bletchley. Philby clearly had his moment at MI6. But none of them over a sustained period of time like Burgess. And was he, in a sense, a die-hard communist or was this a bit of a lark for him, an intellectual exercise? Well, a mixture. I think he was drawn to Marxism at Cambridge as a historian. He saw the future as his two power blocks between America and Russia. He felt that Russia was the,

[00:25:29] he thought America was hell-bent on war and Russia was the only way of saving the world for peace. And he did, you know, he was very knowledgeable about Marxism. But I think also at the same time, you know, clearly you could be a Marxist without becoming a spy. And the fact that he led this covert life was because he enjoyed the thrill of being a spy. And also being a spy for both sides. And someone talked about him, Épatie le bourgeoisie. He loved this sense of riding with the hares and the hounds

[00:25:58] and being on both sides at the same time. Yeah. As being as effective as he appears to be, he was a very self-destructive man from what I gather. Is there any insight you can give us about why he was so self-destructive? Well, I think he was always a heavy drinker. I mean, he was a man who was quite neurotic. He always had trouble sleeping. He actually had a nervous breakdown at Cambridge and had to be carried out of his exams, final year exams, so he never actually got a Cambridge degree. And I think clearly the pressure of being in this double life,

[00:26:27] you know, built up, particularly as he discovered that the net was closing in, that they were code-breaking, they were identifying spies that way, but also defectors were coming in and talking about a spy in the foreign office who had been eaten. You know, so all these things, I think, you know, clearly were a huge pressure on him. And they were all drinking, but he was also taking drugs, taking drugs to go to sleep, taking drugs to wake up. And, you know, it was a terrible cocktail. And he then had an accident in the late 40s where he was pushed down some stairs

[00:26:57] and had to go to hospital, had to go off to Ireland to recuperate. And he was never really the same after about 1948, 49. But it took its toll. I mean, he died at the age of 52, mainly from drink. And was there anything in his sort of early, early years that kind of, I don't know, as a pop psychologist, kind of explains maybe the path he took? Yes, I think there are lots of things. He had a very, they all had in the Cambridge ring absent fathers. Philby's father was abroad.

[00:27:27] McLean and Blunt's father died when they were young. Burgess's father died when he was 13. He hardly knew him even until then because he was a naval officer and always away. He had a very close relationship with his mother. He tells the story of discovering his father dead on top of his mother, having in the course of making love to her and having to separate the bodies, which is quite a sort of powerful experience at age 13. So, and you can see him becoming more radical at school

[00:27:56] under the influence of teachers there. You know, feeling there was injustice in the world, feeling that the only way to stand up to fascism was communism. So you can trace it. And also the sense of increasingly becoming an outsider, a feeling that he didn't quite fit in. He has this famous line, you know, if you don't belong, you betray. And I think he never really felt he belonged. At Eton, he was the son, you know, he wasn't as smart as some of the other people socially smart.

[00:28:25] He wanted to be in pop, which is a previous group, and he wasn't popular enough to be selected. So all these resentments, I think, built up over a period of time. And the Russians caught him at a very vulnerable moment because he'd been, his life had been predicated on an academic career and he'd just abandoned his PhD because he found someone else who was doing the same subject. And he was looking for some purpose in his life. He was a rebel without a cause. And the Russians gave him that cause and they became the father figure to him.

[00:28:54] I suppose that he got so deep as well. I mean, is there any indication that there may have been a point where he questioned his path? Well, I think they all questioned it and it was just too late. Blunt tried to get out and he claims he did get out after the Second World War. I'm not sure that's true, but he certainly was less active. And I mean, Burgess, I mean, the irony is that Burgess hadn't accompanied McLean. He would never have been suspected. He probably would have been, he would have been dismissed from the Foreign Office for the striving offence in Virginia in the 51. He would then become a journalist

[00:29:24] or he wanted to be the motoring correspondent of country life. And he might well never have been, you know, caught and been made public. He would have lived a life from retirement and, you know, might well be alive now at 100 and whatever, 100 and what would he be now? Born in 1911. 104, 105. Yeah. And so when Burgess finally defected, you know, one could assume that he's finally kind of got what he wanted, but a very different picture seems to emerge from his time in Russia.

[00:29:54] Yes. I mean, one of the chapters I call in English and Abroad, which is the title of the Alan Bennett play, which is very accurate. You know, he did say to Michael Redgrave, my life ended when I left London. You know, the things he really loved were, you know, dinner at his club, the reform, picking up men and the Piccadilly, gossip, reading Jane Austen, and none of those things were really available in Moscow. It was a pretty grim place in the 50s and he was very lonely.

[00:30:24] He said he didn't like Russian communists, he only liked British communists and yeah, I mean, you know, he basically drank himself to death and he never said he had regrets. He said he was an idealist, that he'd given his life to this cause and he stood by it, but I think there must have been moments when he must have regretted it and wanted to find a way out, but of course it was too late. You know, he was so heavily compromised as they all were that I think there was no way that they could have got out. Reading your book slightly reminds me

[00:30:54] of a novel, Any Human Heart, where the protagonist meets so many people from various parts of history. Are there any particular encounters that Burgess had with historical figures that have stood out for you? Well, I think the famous one which is actually the subject of a book and a play, several plays, is the meeting with Winston Churchill during the Munich crisis where he's sent down as a BBC producer to persuade Churchill to broadcast at quite a sensitive time. And he basically

[00:31:23] stiffens Churchill's sinews and says, you must fight appeasement. I mean, they were both on the same side there. And Churchill is so impressed with him that he gives him a copy of one of his books and signs it and says, if you ever need any help, bring me this book and I'll help you. So, I mean, that's an extraordinary thing. He was very close to Anthony Eden. When he's in the embassy in Washington, he's the man who takes Washington around town. He was very close to Bevan, very good at impersonating Ernest Bevan, the foreign secretary. But he knew everyone. I mean,

[00:31:53] when he was in Moscow, he would write to Peter Thornicroft, who was a chancellor of Exchequer, dear Peter, much to the disgust of the officials, because he knew Peter Thornicroft. And one of the reasons I think he was allowed to have money sent out to him against the exchange control rules at the time was because he knew Thornicroft and I suspect had some gossip on Thornicroft that he could do. Because one of the things that Burgess did was he would lend his flat for assignations to friends, particularly friends who were bisexual, and then he would blackmail them.

[00:32:24] And he knew all the secrets. He was very charming. People told him things. And I think he just picked up lots and lots of information, which then got passed by. So it wasn't just the secrets he stole. And we know there are about 5,000 documents that he took out. But it's just the information he had about people. Because he was a very personable guy, wasn't he? A very man about town. Very charming, very good company, highly intelligent, very amusing and witty, regarded as the most brilliant undergraduate of his generation. And the fact

[00:32:54] that he had these important people took him seriously. People like Maynard Keynes and others. George Orwell suggests that he wasn't this joke figure, that it suited people to present, I think. Yeah, yeah. One other thing that sort of struck me with reading the book was, I forgot a little bit about his self-destructive behaviour. I was just amazed that Burgess didn't get caught out earlier. Because there were quite a few warning signs and in particular his friend Guy Little before his posting

[00:33:23] to Washington warned him don't be too aggressively communist. So it seems to me like within intelligence services in the Foreign Office they seem to be sort of tolerating communists. Is that a kind of common thing? Yeah, I think he was very lucky. I think he also had protectors, people like Hector McNeill and others who was the Minister of State in the Foreign Office was a great protect mentor for him. I think he was disciplined in 1949 for being indiscreet on holiday and giving away the names when he was drunk of intelligence officials and the disciplinary panel votes 5-4 in his favour

[00:33:53] so it could easily have gone the other way. But I think in some ways the best cover is in plain sight and he to some people made no secret of his views and one of the reasons that he was brought into the Foreign Office was his knowledge of communism and his contacts with communists and he became an expert on communism who would lecture on it at the summer school Foreign Office summer school so in some ways that was one of his strengths. I think people also said that's Guy they could never take him totally seriously they couldn't believe that

[00:34:23] he would be a spy because they'd never been a spy like him before. I think but you're right people like Guy Little who was the deputy director of MI5 and who was very close to him I think must have suspected something. I mean I think they were either extremely naive or they chose to turn a blind eye. People like Victor Rothschild who'd known him at Cambridge known him as an active communist you know he never said anything to the authorities until after he fled why not? I think there's possibly a loyalty to one's friends

[00:34:52] I think there was a sense also particularly in the Second World War that Russia was our allies so that wasn't a problem but a lot of people who were communists who'd been communists in the 30s were recruited into the secret service because they had language skills and highly intelligent and I think people realised that in order to defeat Hitler they had to basically supple the devil sometimes and bring people in who perhaps wouldn't have passed scrutiny otherwise and once they were in actually it was quite difficult to get rid of them.

[00:35:22] Definitely and in particular for me I suppose Guy Little stood out because when it was revealed that Burgess had absconded in his diary he almost I don't know he wrote a passage We can't believe it he can't believe it he's in denial you know he'd been a very close friend he writes in his diary about it and I think you know there's this wonderful sort of irony because Garami Rees who was one of Burgess's recruits goes to Guy Little says I want to tell you about the spy ring

[00:35:51] and goes to Guy Little and says well Anthony Blunt was also involved and Guy Little can't believe that because Blunt has been his assistant during the war and at some of the meetings even Blunt is present at the meetings where Grommie Rees wants to expose him and everyone basically decides that Grommie Rees is the one who's suspicious even though he's the one telling the truth and they kind of close ranks again they can't believe it and there's a lot of mutual recrimination you know

[00:36:21] there's another chap called Thomas Harris and he's under suspicion because his close links to Philby and they all begin to ratten each other and even Philby to save his skin begins to ratten other people some of them like McLean and Burgess knowing that they've safely got away but also putting blame on others I mean he's putting blame on McLean actually several months before McLean's picked up in order to bolster his own credentials so this idea that they chose between friends and country is not true they deceived everyone the whole time and they were all deceiving people in

[00:36:51] their sexual lives as well but Philby was a great philanderer Burgess was very very promiscuous so they were betraying people every which way yeah no wonder they took to alcohol well it must have been we'd love to get inside their minds because how they could reconcile this and how they could become communists to fight fascism and then suddenly 1939 the fascists and communists are on the same side and they kind of reconcile that by saying yes it's just a delaying tactic

[00:37:21] until Russia can build up its forces and they would always find an an explanation for anything you know they saw the purges they saw what was happening in Budapest and I mean you know later they knew what was going on in Stalin's Russia and yet somehow they still seemed prepared to serve Stalin because Burgess in particular was defending Stalin's pact with Hitler at one time absolutely well he said it's a delaying tactic and we mustn't take it seriously

[00:37:51] do you think he genuinely believed that or was he just sort of I think he did and to be honest he was right that's what it was well thank you where can our listeners find this wonderful book well I have a website called Stalin's Englishman which lists all my events and what I'm doing but it's on Amazon it's in bookshops so it should be pretty widely available the good news is they're already reprinting before the books are even published such has been the interest fantastic brilliant

[00:38:20] well thank you very much for talking to us about Guy Burgess today has been fantastic thank you very much for asking thanks for listening

[00:38:49] this is Secrets and Spies