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A review by avrilhj
Stalin's Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring by Andrew Lownie
5.0
Is one meant to feel quite so sympathetic towards a traitor? I absolutely understand the Cambridge Spies feeling in the 1930s that the only way to fight fascism was with communism, and so supporting the USSR on that basis, but to continue the spying after Stalin’s purges, and the pact with Hitler, and the Iron Curtin descending across Europe? Surely by the time Burgess and Maclean defected they would have known that the USSR was as totalitarian as Nazi Germany? But did Burgess ever truly intend to defect? He said he didn’t, and was apparently upset at Moscow not allowing him to return to the UK, since he was sure he would have been able to stand up to interrogation.
Lownie, in summing up Burgess’ impact, suggests that it was his influence and relationships that were most important, the people he recruited to spy, and those they recruited, and that he was the glue that kept the Cambridge Spies together. His defection, along with Maclean, also caused huge problems between the UK and the USA when the latter discovered just how slack the former’s intelligence services were.
As an explanation for his treachery, Lownie places more emphasis on the importance of Burgess wanting to discover secrets and exercise covert power than on his homosexuality, because he says Burgess felt no shame in being homosexual. But I do think that being homosexual in a time when it was officially illegal, and yet when people like Burgess were able to get away with something that was a crime because of the hypocrisy of the class system, must have influenced his attitude to secrets and compartmentalised lives. Surely?
One things this biography makes very clear is how badly the UK was served by the ‘old school tie’ attitude, of which Burgess took constant advantage as he wore his Old Etonians tie everywhere.
I am aware that my sympathy for Burgess comes partly from his sexuality, and partly because I have seen him played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hollander. But having read this biography I am still slightly sympathetic. Maybe it’s the Australian in me wanting the British Establishment to receive a good kicking?
Lownie, in summing up Burgess’ impact, suggests that it was his influence and relationships that were most important, the people he recruited to spy, and those they recruited, and that he was the glue that kept the Cambridge Spies together. His defection, along with Maclean, also caused huge problems between the UK and the USA when the latter discovered just how slack the former’s intelligence services were.
As an explanation for his treachery, Lownie places more emphasis on the importance of Burgess wanting to discover secrets and exercise covert power than on his homosexuality, because he says Burgess felt no shame in being homosexual. But I do think that being homosexual in a time when it was officially illegal, and yet when people like Burgess were able to get away with something that was a crime because of the hypocrisy of the class system, must have influenced his attitude to secrets and compartmentalised lives. Surely?
One things this biography makes very clear is how badly the UK was served by the ‘old school tie’ attitude, of which Burgess took constant advantage as he wore his Old Etonians tie everywhere.
I am aware that my sympathy for Burgess comes partly from his sexuality, and partly because I have seen him played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hollander. But having read this biography I am still slightly sympathetic. Maybe it’s the Australian in me wanting the British Establishment to receive a good kicking?