Spies and Traitors Knowledge Centers

Cambridge spy Guy Burgess was a supreme networker, with a contacts book that included everyone from statesmen to socialites, high-ranking government officials to the famous actors and literary figures of the day. He also set a gold standard for conflicts of interest, working variously, and often simultaneously, for the BBC, MI5, MI6, the War Office, the Ministry of Information and the KGB.

In this riveting book, S.J. Hamrick draws on documentary evidence concealed for almost half a century in reconstructing the complex series of 19471951 events that led British intelligence to identify all three as Soviet agents. Basing his argument primarily on the Venona archive of broken Soviet codes released in 1995-1996 as well as on complementary Moscow and London sources, Hamrick refutes the myth of MI5s identification of Maclean as a Soviet agent in the spring of 1951.

This is an exhaustive account of the origins and motives of the three most infamous traitors in modern British history. It is also a remorseless investigation of how they were recruited to spy for Russia--and who recruited them.

Cambridge spy Guy Burgess was a supreme networker, with a contacts book that included everyone from statesmen to socialites, high-ranking government officials to the famous actors and literary figures of the day. He also set a gold standard for conflicts of interest, working variously, and often simultaneously, for the BBC, MI5, MI6, the War Office, the Ministry of Information and the KGB.

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.