Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
Stalin's Englishman
Stalin's Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring | Andrew Lownie
2 posts | 2 read | 5 to read
Guy Burgess was the most important, complex, and fascinating of "The Cambridge Spies"—Maclean, Philby, Blunt—brilliant young men recruited in the 1930s to betray their country to the Soviet Union. An engaging and charming companion to many, an unappealing, utterly ruthless manipulator to others, Burgess rose through academia, the BBC, the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6, gaining access to thousands of highly sensitive secret documents which he passed to his Russian handlers. In this first full biography, Andrew Lownie shows us how even Burgess's chaotic personal life of drunken philandering did nothing to stop his penetration and betrayal of the British Intelligence Service. Even when he was under suspicion, the fabled charm which had enabled many close personal relationships with influential Establishment figures (including Winston Churchill) prevented his exposure as a spy for many years. Through interviews with more than a hundred people who knew Burgess personally, many of whom have never spoken about him before, and the discovery of hitherto secret files, Stalin's Englishman brilliantly unravels the many lives of Guy Burgess in all their intriguing, chilling, colorful, tragi-comic wonder.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
review
Minervasbutler
post image
Pickpick

Well-researched and readable biography of Guy Burgess, one of the "Cambridge Spies". The ease with which this philandering, drunken and overtly Communist slob was able to infiltrate the British secret service while already spying for Moscow is breathtaking. Background checks? Chap went to Eton, for heaven's sake. Burgess's treachery seems motivated by a measure of warped idealism combined with a delight in skulduggery. Fascinating.

CarolynM Have you ever seen the TV film from the 80's An Englishman Abroad? It's based on Coral Browne's account of meeting him in Moscow when she was touring with the RSC in the 50's. If not, it's worth tracking down. 5y
Ruthiella Any time I read about this era and espionage I am floored at how incompetent they all seem! 5y
Minervasbutler @CarolynM I've read Alan Bennett's play but not seen the film. Now collected with A Question of Attribution (about Blunt) as Single Spies, I believe 5y
CarolynM Oo, thanks for that. I will look for a copy🙂 5y
60 likes3 stack adds5 comments
blurb
Cydster61
post image

The author says in the preface that this is the first in depth biography of Burgess because so little material has survived. This is apparent when a whole paragraph is devoted to how great the drains were at Burgess's first boarding school.