Stalin's Englishman: the lives of Guy Burgess

right good morning ladies and gentlemen can you  hear me but it's very nice to be back in Cambridge   very but nice to be back at the alumni Festival  in in person and I think I'm meant to give you   some housekeeping notes oh here we are you've got  them which you can read and I'm here to talk about   guy Burgess one of one of the great things that  the university specialized in was producing   Russian spies and he in some ways was I think  the most interesting it's a book that actually   I began working on when I was here in the  early 1980s and if you remember some of you   may remember that almost every week the Sunday  Times had a story about a new Russian spy being   exposed this time of course that Anthony blunt  was named by Mrs Thatcher and I began to work   as everybody working on my finals on a book on  Anthony blunt at the time for another author   and I began researching this book then  at that time of course many of the people   who knew Burgess were still alive that he  himself would only have been in his early   70s and so one of the great strengths I  think of the book was that I was able to   interview people in fact some of the people I met  when I actually came myself as a visitor to the   alumni Festival met them at the festival just  by chance one of his contemporaries at Trinity   and then I'm afraid I not a good example as an  author I didn't do anything for about 30 years and   by that stage documents were beginning to appear  and we were I was able to pull the two together   when I did the original hardback of the book I had  said to the publisher too that I knew about 500   files on Burgess McLean were about to be released  into the national archives in the Autumn of 2015.   when the book was coming out master I could have  access to them I was I was told like on the basis   the book would come out after the files were  released I wasn't given permission to do that   and two weeks after the book came out these  files were released and these were the files   of the foreign Office security department so  all the investigations into Burgess and McLean   fortunately I didn't have to change much some  of it was updated for the paperback but I think   there's still a lot more to come out on the story  only about half the versions of McLean fires were   released no files on filby or blunt or any of  the others in the Cambridge spy ring so I think   I hope I may be back here in future years with  an updated version I'm told that one of the most   popular subjects at the alumni weekend is spies  I've discovered that myself as a writer that the   only two subjects people seem to buy books on  Royals and spies a lot easier to research spies   than the Royals they're much more secretive  but anyway let's perhaps go through I think   I've been given three hours so just go through  the story of guy Burgess here he is actually   staying on the aisle of egg with Stephen Ransom  and when I first interviewed Stephen Ransom and   he said that he hardly knew guy Burgess he really  couldn't help me by chance I actually met Stevens   run someone's niece shortly after a few years  later and I said it was such a Pity he couldn't   help me and she said the two of them were lovers  for several years and that's one of the problems   researching these books people don't necessarily  tell you everything you would hope they would say   this is where the Story begins April 1911 he's  born in this house in devonport his father was   a naval officer not a very successful one but  that didn't stop Burgess pretending he was and   he came from a long line of here he is  Malcolm Burgess of basically people who had   certainly armed forces his father was Colonel the  Royal artillery they were from Huguenot stock and   had come across his mother Evelyn actually here  you see her here with her husband was a much came   from a very prosperous background her father ran  a bank in south sea which was sold to Lloyd's and   so there was they were never short of money in  fact guy Burgess had a trust fund really all the   way through his life including in Moscow one of  the things people got most upset about later on   wasn't that he despised but he was able to send  money to Russia purchases Malcolm Berger's career   didn't really Prosper there was a period after  the first world war when the Navy was cut and he   decided to take early retirement as a lieutenant  commander and they moved to this house in westmere   where Burgess grew up and here is Malcolm  Burgess as a command Lieutenant Commander   the age of 80 was sent off to a practical  called lockers Park which had a very strong   Naval tradition he was destined to follow his  father into the Navy mountbatten had been there   a few years before David Beatty who was the son  of Peter rather was the son of the Admiral was   there with him and it was one of the best known  prep schools of the time a big feeder to Eaton   and Harrow I think one of the interesting things  I discovered was that they decided the houses   into two colours the blues and the Reds can you  guess which colour Burgess was even at the age   of eight one of the things that we forget about  Burgess we always assume that he was a bit of   a very anti-exercise in fact he had been told at  school after he left school the exercise was bad   for you and you should give it up which actually  a number of my contemporaries did have done and   they've actually lived far longer than the ones  who did exercise but here he is in the football   team at Locus Park very bright all-rounder he was  in the sort of top form for the last five terms he   was a very good pianist and he particularly was  good at Art and if you have read my book or read   my book you'll see many of the illustrations  and the cartoons that he drew in in the book   now he couldn't go to Dartmouth until he was  13 and a half and because he was so bright they   basically kicked him out of the school at the  beginning of January 1924 and so it was decided   that he would spend a year at Eaton and here is  his house had eaten funny enough I talked there   on Tuesday and it was interesting to go and see  to see the house there and he went there and it   was in his beginning of his third term so the  September of 1924 that a family tragedy took   place his father was then in his early 40s and he  died suddenly of a heart attack while according   to Burgess making love to Evelyn and the poor boy  was brought in and had to separate the two bodies   now I interviewed guys brother Nigel who was  also at Cambridge two years younger he had no   recollection of the story so I suspect it was one  of those myths those fantasies that Burgess was   beginning to create even at a young age but you  can imagine it was pretty must have been pretty   upsetting to lose your father and then literally  a week or so later to have to go back to school   in fact at the end of that term he was sent on  to Dartmouth to begin his Naval training and   this course was a very different experience  it was the discipline was quite strict they   ran everywhere they had to have their neat clothes  neatly folded they wore uniform they were learning   about seamanship and Knots and Engineering rather  than things that really interested him and he was   pretty unhappy there and I think we begin to see  then since this chameleon element from beginning   to come out that he basically presented this front  that he was happy but actually was quite I came I   would say also quite anti-establishment because of  the incense that's very strict experience so here   he is at Dartmouth this is his term one of the  interesting things is that if he had stayed at   Dartmouth he would have been clearly serving as a  naval officer half the people in that picture were   killed in the second world war eight of them  Rose to flag rank so we might have had a very   different story if he hadn't come to Cambridge  he might have ended up as Admiral Burgess and   we'd be praising him now anyway he didn't he left  slightly under a cloud there were rumors that he'd   been caught stealing shades of the Winslow boy  there were stories about homosexuality I think   the likelihood is the story that was put out that  he had defective eyesight later when he was tested   during the war he did have poor eyesight and the  fact that Ethan took him back I think was a sign   that that there was no problem so here he is back  in his house at Eaton and he begins to have a   pretty distinguished career one of the surprises  again was to find he was a large Corporal in the   OTC with the cricket commentator Brian Johnson  it's rather odd to think of the two marching   down Eaton High Street leading the OTC he played  in the first 11 football and the only real change   at the time he was eaten was that his mother got  remarried and it says again something about the   Dynamics of the family that he learned about the  remarriage not from her but from his house master   and the man that she married here a man called  John Bassett Burgess always described as a   professional Gambler in fact he was a retired army  officer he'd been Lawrence of robia's right-hand   man in the Middle East during the first world  war in fact being a spy and the only gambling   he did was he enjoyed going to the races both of  them did and they moved to ask it for that reason   so here is Burgess in the sixth form he  specializes in history and he has all the   glittering prizes but the one prize that he can't  get is he he's not elected a member of Pop now pop   some of you some of you will know is the society  Deaton where they can wear fancy waistcoats and   walk across the grass and incense are a group of  elite prefects and he wanted to belong to this and   basically no one wanted him to I mean you tend to  be a member of Pop if you're a captain of cricket   if you're the son of of an aristocrat or you're  a jolly good Chap and as someone said he was   none of those three things already even eaten  there was a strong sense of rebellious nature   very non-conformist he was very close to  a man called Robert Burley who eventually   became Headmaster and taught history there known  as red Rob he was beginning his in a sense his   political Journey which would finally end here in  Cambridge here he is as a member of the library he   which gave him the privilege of beating people  it's one of the things that really affected him   quite deeply watching people being beaten it was  one of the things that he felt brutalized everyone   I didn't stop him later Cambridge having books on  flagellation in his in his study but we can begin   to see the signs that we that emerge later on  of this very disaffected youth here he is in the   final sort of speech that heating and from Eden  he won a major open history scholarship to Trinity   now those of you who are at Trinity will think  that not only is it the richest and the grandest   of colleges but it's the one where they say God  is a trinity man and there he went first year   he spent his time involved in place he did the  set design for Captain brass band's conversion   he was very friendly with Michael Redgrave and DD  rylands he had a bit more money he was slightly   older of course because of this time out he'd  had a Dartmouth and it was said that he even   propositioned the captain of the boat club on his  first night at Cambridge it was also said that   no one had ever got a scholarship on so little  learning but on sheer style above anything else   so at the end of this first year at Trinity he  got a first one of the other Scholars was Eden   at Powell and I loved this idea of the two of them  being there on high table together as Scholars and   he really didn't really become very politically  active until probably his second or third year   here he is in fact punting with a fellow communist  I'm jumping slightly and like many of the fellow   Communists of the time later a conservative MP and  so this is Ramsay and muskrat the pictures taken   of him in this first few years and you can see you  get some sense of him that's quite a good picture that I think is quite revealing he'd be busy  basically he was supporting the waiters who've   gone out and strike it from Trinity but when  I asked his brother what he was like with the   servants at home he said that no one was Ruder  to the servants and guy and here he is I think on   egg basically letting the workers do all the work  and here he was on holiday with Everett utram his   history teacher and here is actually at the end of  his second year he'd game go to First in history   and he goes out hunting with this man called Jack  Hunter who was later became quite a well-known   film producer and I got this from an album from  the man who was also on this picnic at the time and I don't know if you recognize any of the  figures in this picture or indeed what this is   this is probably the most famous secret society  in the world the apostles you may see Guy see   Anthony blunt down at the bottom there Hugh  Sykes Davis who was still teaching when I was   here in the early 80s and the apostles  is a very important influence in fact   was targeted by the Russians who decided  that they would as they really began to   recruit a long-term penetration agents in  various countries their new strategy would   be to go to Elite universities around  the world they even targeted Oxford   and to basically have these people who were  going to the Civil Service all the times or the   various places that they thought they would  be influential later on and to have these   long-term malls or sleepers and so one of the  targets was the apostles and one of the reasons   for that was that here was the society many of  whom were gay at a time when it was a criminal   offense and therefore they had to lead lives of  subterfuge and also a sense of being excluded   and outside normal society and that created a  certain bond between them they also felt that   their loyalties were to the higher things  beauty truth and of course famously one of   the members Ian Foster said I hope I'd have the  guts to betray my country before my friends so   there was a very strong sense of friendship  and the apostles was one part of this whole   Russian targeting of the universities and of  course this appear at the beginning of the 1930s   there was a sense we just had the national  government a sense the older generation had   failed the younger generation the only way of  in a sense standing up to Fascism was through   this popular front which was coordinated by the  Communists and so people like guy Burgess began   to be influenced by that and we begin to see the  Cambridge University social society which actually   was the Communists becoming the larger society in  the university and this is a famous movement since   where the whole thing becomes very public this is  the Armistice day March of November 1933 you'll   recognize I've got a pointer but you'll recognize  the tall man under the r of War as Donald McLean   and this was basically a walk to the war memorial  by the railway station to basically Express their   solidarity against the war it actually ended  up in fisticuffs with some hearties and various   other people Burgess was on this March but  being Burgess he didn't walk it he went by   car with Julian Bell and they had mattresses  at the front of the car and they used that   to weave themselves around again when the hunger  Marchers came through Cambridge and a lot of the   undergraduates walked with them to London Burgess  took the train and joined them in Hyde Park and   he took the precaution of wearing his auditonian  tie just in case he was arrested by the police   so he was living in sense of double life all  the way through now one of his close friends   and Trinity was a year ahead of him reading  history Kim philby also very involved in the   dream History Society which is again one of  the key societies that was penetrated and when   philby graduated in 1934 he went off to Vienna  and was very keen to do what he could to help   the the fighting the the help of the Jewish  Community there and to stand up against fascism   and whether through accident or deliberately  I think probably deliberately he was directed   towards a one called let's see Friedman who he  fell in love with and married who was a Soviet   agent and basically he was recruited and he was  sent back to Cambridge with a list of seven of his   friends to recruit the top of the list was Donald  McLean at the bottom of the list was Guy Burgess   and they had their reservations about guy Burgess  he was terribly Indiscreet which is not normally   a virtue that you need as a spy but he sort of  cottoned on to what was going on he basically   forced himself in now the interesting thing is  we do not know who numbers two to six were on   that list so whether they were approached  and turned down the request or they were   recruited and we don't know who they are but one  of the interesting things is that this period of   between the Autumn 34 and the Autumn 35s when  much of the recruitment in Cambridge was done   each of the recruits was numbered and though there  was a few weeks between the recruitment of McLean   and Burgess so actually something like 20 or 30  numbers between them suggesting that there were   many more recruited at that time we don't know  about and I think one of the things we need to   remember is that though everyone talks about  the Cambridge five the expression comes from   The Magnificent Seven I think it was it because  it was from Seven the Yul Brynner film that was   it was coined actually much later on the reality  is that there are probably something like 30 or   40 members of the Cambridge spy ring lots  of names that since begun to emerge over   the years people like Michael straight she was  also at Trinity Aleister Watson and others so   hopefully if some of these files do get  released we will perhaps have some other names   so here is Burgess at the time he was recruited  and here is Donald McLean he was at Trinity Hall   and all the people that they were targeting and  recruiting were in some ways the elite McLean   had got a first Burgess had got a first and just  put once in fact he had a nervous breakdown and   had a [ __ ] attack rather than getting a first  and his part twos but they were all in a sense   of major figures most of them actually active  in the cuss and so MI5 actually took the cuss   membership book and actually it was nearby five  files until only a few years ago and now you can   see it and you can get some idea possibly of who  some other people who may have been recruited   so one of burgess's jobs was to recruit other  members and one of his first recruits was somebody   had an affair with at Cambridge Anthony blunt he  also had an affair with Donald McLean and so here   is blunt on a trip to Russia shortly before he was  recruited Burgess has also had a responsibility he   also recalled recruited the fifth member of the  gang John can cross who was also a trinity who   would pass first into the foreign office he also  had responsibility for Oxford and this is one of   his recruits there a man called garami Reese who's  to come back and haunt him later in life because   it was grumpy Reese who was the chief source for  Andrew Boyle's book on blunt published in 1979   which led Mr stature to name blunt as one of the  Cambridge ring and here's Glory Reese who later   became an ester at spectator and a fellow of new  College now there's a big debate about the Oxford   ring they were certainly were approaches there  they worked through the October Club but there   we never really hear of any of the spies from  Oxford now that could be because they were so   clever they never got caught or they're actually  so useless they actually never did anything   so I'll leave you again to make up your  own mind which those who want to believe   this is the American Dimension we often forget  about the Cambridge ring this is Michael Strait   who actually left who was would have been  president of the union and left to go back   before his term to the states and became joined  the state department so again the tentacles of   this this penetration were beginning to spread  out pretty quickly we think of the KGB as a   bunch of thugs in fact the recruitment process  was incredibly sophisticated it took a several   months and it was done people often didn't know  who they were working for you they were working   for world peace for the common turn and it was  a gradual process and the people who did it were   very sophisticated to Central Europeans the chief  one was a man called Arnold or Otto Deutsch who   was teaching at London University he had a PhD in  sex psychology he spoke I think about 12 languages   and he was someone that they incense became this  Father Figure to the Cambridge spies one of the   interesting things about all of them is the absent  father the fathers had died when they were young   or like Kim philby his father was abroad and had  left the family and these then since the Russian   state became the father that they hadn't got  gave it was a figure of authority and Direction   and gave them some purpose and the other recruiter  was this man called Theodore Mali who's Hungarian   Cavalry officer who later became a priest so  you can see quite unusual people now one of   the reasons that I think Burgess was recruited for  several reasons it was both political and personal   part of it the personal element was the sense  that he in a sense hadn't achieved the promise   that he had had hoped for he hadn't got his  first important to though actually interesting   enough he was allowed to stay on at Trinity for  a PhD and he taught several students including   the head the future head of the foreign the  foreign Office security department who was the   man who investigated him only 20 years later and  actually taught him so well that he got into the   foreign office he wouldn't have got in without  burgess's help so lots of these sort of ironies   that come through but Burgess also in a sense was  looking for some purpose he had abandoned his PhD   because someone else was actually writing on  the same subject and so the twin pillars's   career his political activities and his academic  activities he had lost one of those crutches and   they was there for a very vulnerable point when  the Soviet Union approached him for recruitment   I think also there was a sense of a Patty Li  bourgeoisier I have several Chapters at the end   of the book trying to understand why he in a sense  signed up for all the Russians at the start time   and I think it just gave him a sense a  say of purpose of being valued at a time   when he had very low self-esteem when are people  recruited we tend to use an acronym mice so money   ideology compromise and ego now the Russian  the Cambridge spies were paid some money   sometimes up to a year's salary because year's  salary for the time but they weren't votivated   by money they were largely motivated by  ideology particularly people like McLean   very little by compromise though Burgess himself  when he recruited people used compromise he used   to Blackmail people he would lend them his flat  for their assignations and then blackmail them   but I do think ego is quite a  strong part of the of the equation I'm jumping slightly ahead here but this is a man  called Yuri moden who actually was the Russian   agent running the Cambridge ring just after the  second world war again a very sophisticated man I   interviewed him for the book he was still around  in the 80s and 90s but again I think it belies   this idea that this was pretty it wasn't a very  sophistic operation with some very skilled people   involved and Burgess and he got on extremely well  he had terrific admiration for Burgess who he said   was the most effective and actually amazingly the  most organized of the Cambridge spies winbo just   came down from Cambridge he wasn't quite sure what  he wanted to do he failed he was too old to go   into the foreign office he failed to get a job on  the times and he did some work for this man Jack   McNamara who was concerned with MP but he was also  very involved with the anglo-german fellowship and   one of the Russian targets was to find out what  German intentions were and the links between   I suppose the British aristocracy and banking  circles and the Germans and the Nazis so he went   there in fact Kim philby went also to work for the  anglo-german fellowship and edited their magazine   the other person he became close to and had the  fair with was this man Harold Nicholson married   to Future Sackville West and that was to remain an  important friendship all the way through his life   Nicholson was one of the people who continued  to correspond with him when he went to Moscow   and here is Burgess whether he was directed  there or he decided to do it but he decided   to join the BBC he failed to get in the first  time but he succeeded the second time and here   is his picture on his BBC file the first picture  was turned down because the BBC said we don't   really want a picture for your official file of  you sitting on the Sands and Camber Sands and   bare feet but the BBC actually was an inspired  place for him he was a talks producer he quickly   proved himself to be very good at it and he used  that this position of influence to bring his   mates in so blunt for example became a regular  broadcaster and when we look at the nature of   in a sense that the treasure we always think  of spy of Agents being betrayed but the lots   and lots of ways in which spies can be effective  and one of them is as an agent of influence it's   exactly what Michael Foote was for the Russians  later in the century and therefore he was able   to shape Paul policy to shape public opinion and  he became in the course of his career right the   way through to the end even in Moscow a great  expert on propaganda and basically Black Ops   he was actually the first of the Cambridge ring to  be recruited into intelligence through basically a   homosexual Circle that he had and also through  his work at the BBC he got friendly with a man   called David footman who's an intelligence officer  and footman recruited him as basically to find out   what was going on in French political circles  part of this his group of his Homer what it   was called the homantown this group of gay  circles he moved in in Paris were involved   with political circles there and here is Uncle  Joseph ball who was working for incense for   central office but also was an MI5 agent and  he was a very important sort of figure in the   dark State and Burgess basically reported  to him here he is with Neville Chamberlain   and this is the home interned person a man  called Edward Pfeiffer head of the French   Scout movement and well-known serial masochist  in Paris and basically bird Joseph was working   for the Russians he was also working for Joseph  Ball's slightly unofficial MI5 sorry MI6 operation   but he was also being drawn in to work more  officially as an MI6 agent and one of his first   jobs was to basically set up an soe training  school at this place called brickenberry and   he brought in Kim philby into MI6 Kim philby who  almost reached the top of MI6 so again when we   look at the importance of Burgess it was as a  recruiter as someone who brought in some of the   key players into intelligence like Kim philby  quite apart from the other worker he was doing   he was actually sacked after a few weeks  at brickenberry for trying to seduce one   of the other instructors and we he then leaves  he returns to the BBC he runs a program called   the week in Westminster which again gives him very  useful political connections but he's recruited by   This Man Called Campbell Johnson who's a trinity  contemporary his daughter actually was a fellow   until recently of New Hope and Kendall Johnson  uses him to run two agents one is this man called   Eric Kessler who was a Swiss Diplomat and that  was useful for picking up what was going on with   the neutrals peace negotiations and all those sort  of things and the other was this man called Andre   rivet who was a Hungarian and he reported on some  of the Exile movements in London both these men   Burgess had affairs with both these men he also  recruited for Soviet intelligence and so one of   the problems in some ways one of the successes  was often when he approached people and said you   know can you do something for me he would say  that he was doing it on in on the auspices of   British intelligence when actually of course  he was sending the material to the Russians   and this is one of the victims of the whole story  a man called guy little who are a very senior MI5   officer who probably would have run MI5 if he  hadn't had this very unfortunate association   with Burgess they would go to the Music Hall  every Monday Little's wife had run off with her   I think stepbrother and he was pretty lonely  and so every Monday they'd go and chat about   office gossip so Burgess picked up the order of  battle all the stories going around that little   gave him thinking he was a trusted colleague and  poor old little when the whole balloon went up   in 1951 was was shunted across the atomic  energy Authority and then quietly retired   the other person in this whole story is dick white  the only man to be in head of both MI5 and MI6 and   the man responsible for the investigations into  Burgess after 1951 and I think it just brings   home that when Burgess fled 1951 they were all  extremely shocked that he had been he'd betrayed   them they felt betrayed personally and so this  was as much a personal story as just investigating   just another Russian spy and the other member  that we need to think about is Victor rossjar   the Contemporary of Burgesses at Trinity the  future Lord Rothschild I think there's quite   a lot of evidence that his wife Tess Rothschild  was part of the ring and Victor was covering up   for her a lot of the interviews for example  with Tess still remain closed it explains   partly his behavior when he tried to bring in  or basically worked with Peter Wright to get   spycatcher out which of course there's no mention  of Victor Rothschild but Burgess had something   on Rothschild he'd been in the back of a car on a  trip from Cambridge to London when Rothschild had   killed a cyclist just before his 21st birthday  the whole thing was hushed up it never actually   got out in fact Rothschild married the daughter  of the Barrister who basically got him off but   this was something that Burgess had on Rothschild  all the way through his life and it was a very   complicated relationship between them  which we still don't know really the   extent of it but even during the war for example  Rothschild let Burgess use his house in London   so Burgess is working for the BBC he falls in  has an affair with this man James Pope Hennessy   later quite a well-known Royal biographer and  James Pope Hennessy is in love with Burgess   this woman is in love with James Pope Hennessy  I don't know if you recognize this he's only   just died just over a hundred Clarissa Churchill  Winston Churchill's niece and Anthony Eden's wife   and she was extremely close to Burgess he  had been tasked to seduce her the idea of   the Russians had was because she was the niece  of the Prime Minister she must know all the   secrets so we have this extraordinary triangle of  Burgess trying to seduce Clarissa Churchill who's   in love with James Pope Hennessy who is in love  with guy Burgess in fact there's a scene where   Pope Hennessy bursts in and threatens to kill  them all with a shotgun because of this little   sort of triangle and indeed when I interviewed  Carissa Churchill she claimed that she hardly   remembered Burgess had nothing to do with them  but when this the documentation came out in 19   2015 it showed that Burgess had actually proposed  marriage to her and they'd been extremely close   and then as was the other close female  friend he had was Rosman Layman the writer   that friendship I'm afraid sadly end  ended when she tried when he tried to   seduce her Gardener because she said it was  a lot harder to get gardeners and friends so he goes through the the Second World War and  one of the people he meets through the week at   Westminster is a labor politician called Hector  McNeil and at the end of the war Hector McNeil   becomes an MP he's appointed number two in the  foreign office after under Bevin he's the man   just to the left of Bethany here standing up  and he decides that he wants to have it since   an extra special advisor someone who isn't in  a personal secretary who isn't in the foreign   office someone who can deal with journalists  who understands Foreign Affairs and he recruits   Burgess so the Russians can't believe their luck  here we are at the end of the second world war the   creation of NATO and all these supernational  organizations the four power conferences   the division of Europe the Iron Curtain coming  down and here is Burgess at the center of power   Hector McNeil often has to deputize for Bevin he  is in fact the foreign office Minister responsible   for the intelligent Services he has the the safe  where all the secret documents are kept Burgess   has the key to the safe he keeps his copy of  the McKinsey McKinsey report there for safety   but Burgess offers and says look don't worry  I'm not married I don't mind working late at   night I don't mind working weekends Hector McNeil  who's likes to spend his time going to nightclubs   is very happy for Burgess basically to do the  donkey work the result is that something like   three or four thousand documents find themselves  I find themselves in Russian hands in this period   there's often a case where the British negotiating  team at these four power conferences don't know   the British position before the Russians too so  it's an extremely valuable position that he's in   one of the rnas is that the stuff is so good the  Russians think it must be a double cross operation   and they ignore it so here he is struggling to  get the stuff out having rendezvous rendezvous   and strange Parks across London he always asks  he can have it in the pub and he always has to   go to ruislip or somewhere else and passing  across all this information he's sometimes   stopped by the police who think he's a burglar  and when he opens the case and shows them the   documents they say that's fine we thought  you were about to rob a house he even is so   sort of inefficient that sometimes in pubs he  drops these secret documents on the pub floor   and people help them sort of gather them up and  put them back in the suitcase but there's no   doubting that this is one of the most effective  moments when he's working for the Soviet Union   and he continues to move on from his job with  Hector McNeil he seconded then as a member of   the Foreign Service to the information research  Department of black propaganda organization which   he betrays within weeks of it being set up he  has some time in the news Department again a very   important department because all the information  from all the different parts the foreign office   come through the news department they see secret  documents they see the coding arrangements and all   this course is passed back to the Russians this  moment during the Berlin airlift when hedge McNeil   is on a cruise in the solent and basically is  sorry Hector O'Neill calls on Bevin to come back   but it's an example of the sort of caricatures  that Burgess would draw it's actually in cabinet   office papers he he drew it in some meeting and  it's then been stamped and sluck in the papers   by this time you always remain very close to his  mother she was living in Newbury and he had a   house on her estate there it's a huge place for  18 Acres so he divided this time between a flat   in London and I say this house in Newbury he was  working his way up meanwhile McLean who joined   the foreign office after Cambridge was working his  way through the foreign office he had been posted   to Paris he'd then been posted to Cairo where he  had a nervous breakdown and in fact smashed up   the rooms of a secretary there he was sent back  to Britain to have psychiatric examination and   instead of being kicked out of the foreign office  they made him head of the American Department   and philby was a moving swiftly up the ranks  of the of MI6 he became actually head of the   counterintelligence department so he was in a  sense the person who was making sure that MI6   wasn't penetrated he became an expert on the  Russian desk and so they very much had their   key people in John candyross during the war had an  important committee chaired by Morris Hankey which   had a lot of Secrets and was able to pass those  back to the Russians and trying to remember those   yes those are all and blunt was of course working  in MI5 he had been gotten there again through the   help of Burgess and I think people kind of wonder  how these people were easily able to get into   intelligence but the problem was at the beginning  of the second world war one the intentional   Services were expanding very quickly they required  basically relied on Word of Mouth recommendation   and a lot of these people were highly intelligent  they spoke languages in fact a blunt had applied   to join MI5 and on the same day he got two  letters from the same Department the first said   we know that you were a communist at Cambridge  and therefore we don't feel we can implore you   the second said can you start on Monday so he  ignored the first letter and started on Monday   by this stage the cracks are beginning to  appear Burgess is drinking ever more heavily   than he did he is taking drugs to help him sleep  at night drugs to then keep him alert during the   day his they're actually prescribed to him by a  friend who's a vet who's normally does dosages   for horses doesn't quite get it right he falls  down or was pushed down some stairs of that gay   nightclub is sent off to Ireland to recuperate  and gets involved in the traffic accident there   he then goes off to Tangier where he gives he  gets drunk he annoys the local expats by prop   taking over their Arab boys by revealing who the  two heads of the intelligence organizations are   there and he's brought back for a interface and  disciplinary committee and by one vote they vote   they vote to give him one more chance one of the  reasons why and he sent off to the United States   probably the last place he should go as being  very strongly anti-American and of course being   one of the most important embassies for the  foreign office but one of the things that was   happening is the factors are beginning to emerge  after the second World War the most important   or two most important man called gazenko and  another one in Turkey who reveals that there   is a Russian agent who is running a department  of British counterintelligence which is philbeam   Toby realizes this man needs to be neutralized  and arranges to go out and interview him   but he does so it takes he takes his time tips off  the Russians and the man is basically kidnapped   taken back to Russia and killed but it's a  sign that the net is beginning to close in   so in 1951 Burgess is sent to Moss to Washington  now he's sent there that the Korean War has just   broken out as a Far East expert he's actually  been a second secretary in the forest department   for the previous 15 months he's actually shaping  British policy the Americans don't recognize red   China but he actually shapes British policy  to recognize them and puts forward all sorts   of very good arguments the importance  of trade the need to protect Hong Kong   and these reports are all in the archives it's  very interesting to see how seriously he was taken   so on those grounds he's sent off to Washington  but Toby decides that he needs to keep an eye   on him and so he goes to live in philby's House  in Washington philby's installed his secretary   a woman called Esther Whitfield in the Attic you  can see the picture there and Burgess is put in   the basement here this is a picture of the house  I took and that's Esther Whitfield another of the   victims of this whole story she was a foreign  offer she was of an MI6 secretary she'd had an   affair with philby when he was posted to Turkey  and she was posted there she Then followed him to   Washington and she and Burgess became extremely  close again to the point where Burgess proposed   marriage to her and when the the Burgess fled in  1951 she was one of the main people that people   suspected had tipped off McLean and Burgess she  was kicked out of the foreign off completely   innocent kicked out of the foreign office and  died in the 1980s having never really recovered   from this episode but here's a woman extraordinary  woman in love with two of the Cambridge spiring   one of the things I discovered in the course of  my research was that there was someone who was   a Russian spy who didn't go to Cambridge who  was at Imperial College Michael Wilford Mann   Wilford Mann was a was a nuclear expert he worked  or worked on the tonic the atomic research he'd   been recruited by the Russians during the war  he had been discovered by the British and the   Americans and then turned and played back against  the Soviet Union and that's I think why the story   is never really emerged until my book came out and  I found it just by chance and the papers of a man   called Patrick Riley who was a senior foreign  office official just in correspondence with the   head of foreign Office security Man Called George  Carey Foster and they were talking about this case   just buried away to being in the files for years  no one had bothered thinking this correspondence   was important so in some ways that's an argument  for the importance of research and what we call   adjacent files so Burgess is a bit of a nuisance  in Washington no one wants him he's moved from the   forest Department to the Middle East Department  eventually he's moved to a department dealing with   Gathering public opinion which just requires them  to sit in bars all day and talk to Americans which   he's very good at and he has all sorts of  odd jobs and one of the odd jobs is to go   and talk at conferences and in February 1951  he's sent to talk at a Military College in   Charleston South Carolina he decides to drive  down in his Lincoln convertible and on the way   he he's been taught when he went to America  that he should be careful of three things   don't get involved with the race issue don't get  involved with Communists and be careful about   your homosexuality so he said I shouldn't  make a pass at Paul Robeson then should I   anyway on the way down he takes with him as a  hitchhiker a young black sort of drifter who's   gay and they drive down they're arrested for three  times in the same day in the same state Virginia   the first time he's accused of driving 70 in a  50 mile limit and he protests he says it wasn't   70 it was 90. the second time he claims that the  man with him is his chauffeur and he'll report   them to the Embassy and then the third time he  tries to seduce the patrolmen so this all goes   back to the authorities and this isn't since the  beginning of the end of Burgess I don't think he   deliberately did it that's just the way he behaved  but as a result he is sent home to Britain to face   another disciplinary panel now the timing on this  is very good because in the spring of 1951 the   basically there's something called the Winona  codes are broken by cryptologists in America   and they identify a spy in the British Embassy in  1944 called Homer and the way that they the one   thing they know about him is that he goes on trips  to New York on a regular basis because his wife   is having a baby and this basically limits it to  two men and eventually down to Mclean now McLean   needs to be warned but he's presumably under  surveillance so how are they going to warn McLean   they're going to use the opportunity of Burgess  going back to London to go and see his friend and   warn him and says these to be exfiltrated and  that's exactly what happens Burgess goes back   he sees McLean and the plan for the  exfiltration begins they'd know from   again things that they picked up that that McLean  is going to be brought in for interviewing on the   end of May 1951. so literally the Friday before  the Monday he's interviewed Burgess drives down   to when McLean lives outside westrom's house  in tatsfield and the two of them drive down   to Southampton they get on at what are on  a basically a booze cruise which is a ship   that goes out every weekend cruises along the  French Coast calls into places like somalo to   buy GG free Goods it was used by adulterers to  take their Mistresses no passports are shown   and this is their way of getting Burgess out  of getting McLean out McLean is cracking up   with this he's the best his wife is about to  have their third child he doesn't want to go   but clearly the network has to be brought together  and taken out Burgess himself isn't a pretty a   pretty bad State and I think the Russians trick  Burgess they say well we'll use School term part   of the way and then you can come back but actually  they have no intention of letting him come back so   Burgess leaves on this trip in May 1951 thinking  that he will be coming back but he doesn't   one of the interesting things is that the line  has always been that no one knew about their   escape until the following week they didn't work  on Saturdays and it was only when they failed   to report for work on Monday that the balloon  went up but I know from talking from our term   I5 officers and indeed talking to just Justin  welby's mother who was a secretary to Charter   to church all the time and he was in Chartwell  that she got a message to church from we went to   Churchill on Saturday afternoon saying the bird  has flown your neighbor has flown Chartwell and   tatsfield are very close together so there's  a lot of evidence that the British authorities   knew that they were off but nothing was done about  it and certainly nothing public was done about it   and it does play into the Trope that actually  the Cambridge spies were allowed to escape a   lot easier to let the problem go away than to  have to face show trials back here in Britain   Burgess Left Behind his boyfriend a man called  Jack Hewitt again he was alive when I did the   book I got his unpublished autobiography this was  their flat Burgess always decorated his Flats in   blue white and red he was very patriotic and  this is the notice that went out basically to   to all the forces across Europe to look for  the two missing diplomats I love that you'll   probably see the description of Burgess as pigeon  toad the problem is this description to people   like this Border guard went out two weeks after  they arrived in Moscow so it was a complete sham   the whole thing but of course we had this huge  operation went on water diviners were brought in   to work out where they were they said they were  south of Paris poor old Percy sillito the head   of MI5 was sent to explain to the Americans why  their secrets were now in Moscow and basically   they disappeared for five years and it was only in  1956 that they were suddenly produced at a press   conference and people realized what had happened  they'd literally Burgess had left no one knew   there was some story he wrote A Few letters to  his mother back saying you know I'm safe don't   worry they'd actually gone to a closed City on  the Volga called kuber Chef where they were kept   in isolation there was a concern that the  Americans might come and try and kill them   and in fact a documentary based this book went  out a few years ago and the actually went to   the flat in Kuba chef and found the woman who  lived next door to them was still living there   whatever it was over 50 years later in 1956  Tom dryburg who've been a friend of his went   to see him in Moscow and to write this authorized  biography it was an interesting exercise because   Tom dryberg was working for British intelligence  and it was an attempt to try and incriminate   or get Burgess to incriminate himself to find  evidence that could be used to prosecute them   if he ever came back the problem was that they  really had no evidence against Burgess except   not even in the vernono decrypts except the fact  that he had left with McLean I mean that was one   of the great shocks they knew about McLean they  had no idea that Burgess was a spy and when he   disappeared they suddenly put two and two together  and of course what that also did was to pass some   doubt and suspicion on Kim philby and when I asked  a man called Sergey kubish Kondra Chef who was the   KGB General who ran them why they did this this  they basically by having Burgess go and there must   have been someone else who would have escorted  McLean they actually basically lost two other   agents he said we had so many we just couldn't  care less which if it's true is rather chilling so   unfortunately poor old Tom joburg goes to Moscow  to interview him and he's picked up trying to pick   up a Russian boy in the urinals there and he's  recruited by the Russians so he then begins to spy   for the Russians in this Wilderness of mirrors  so here he is on his visit to Burgess in 56.   this is burgess's Dutcher outside Moscow  and that's block of flats he lived in in   in Central Moscow and there he is on just sitting  on his balcony or just outside the front door   and if you've seen ancient abroad by Alan Bennett  that's a very accurate depiction of his life in   Moscow he recreated the rooms he basically had in  London and Cambridge hunting Prince on the walls   he played the Eaton boating song he hung around  he was extremely lonely he hung around the Warsaw   ballet in various big hotels in the hope of  meeting people from the West people like Steven   spender and Graham green came out to see him  he worked for a Publishing House introducing   the Russians to British authors like Ian Foster  he also worked for the Russian for the Foreign   Service there creating false documents black  propaganda connected with public affairs he also   of course was able to advise the Russians about  various people many of the politicians that he was   close to during the war in the week at Westminster  were now in the cabinet he often had incriminating   evidence against them because he has to say he  would lend his flat out to them for their various   love affairs and then blackmail them when his flat  was searched after he fled they the MI5 found a   guitar case filled with love letters and they saw  how touching until they realized he'd kept these   Love Letters to Blackmail the person involved  his old mum came out to see him there she is   this is a bit picture a picnic on the Moscow  River here is Sochi where he would go quite often   and these are some of the last  pictures taken of him in 1963 in 1963 he basically dies off drink he's drunk  himself to death in Moscow and he's only 52 he   was just completely bored he had a young Russian  lover called tolia he didn't speak Russian totally   didn't speak English so it's difficult to know  how they communicated Talia seems to be in a   KGB plant because the day after burgess's death  he disappeared and no one has been able to trace   him ever since the man the glasses there is Nigel  the younger brother who had been kicked out of MI5   as a result of in effect his brother Nigel went  into advertising and if you remember the ad that   the tea ads with the chimpanzees that was his  great claim to fame anyway he when Burgess died   he Nigel went to Thomas Cook to buy a ticket to  go out there the woman at the desks recognized   the name she said Burgess you're going to  Moscow will that be a single sir or return there he is so there is Nigel our Melinda  McLean who was to have an affair with Kim philby   Donald McLean who of course they live very close  together and that is Natalia burgess's housekeeper   and this is the armchair of Burgess that he  passed on to philby he passed on some of his   closest books to philby as well he didn't pass on  anything Regional clay they never really got on he   thought of himself as a bit of a school slot squat  and he also with the books were given to philby   they discovered that most of them were borrowed  library books that should have been returned   so and we've go to the form Library you can see  some of these books come back and he was brought   back an undercover of Darkness was buried in  westmeon with his father and but under cover of   Darkness just Nigel his wife and his son he was he  being desperate to come back to Britain he finally   achieved his aim but only in death and only in  great secrecy and to my great chagrah all his   letters to his mother were thrown into the grave  and lost until I discovered MI5 had kept copies   of them and they kindly put them in the archives  and so we have again the sense of communication   so that's a very good point to stop I'm very  happy to answer questions and thank you very much your questions yeah all right what is your what is your favourite film  version of the Cambridge spies story   oh I think my favourite version is in Englishman  abroad I mean which is extremely accurate in fact   one journalist interviews who worked for  the daily worker was sent out rather like   the English and abroad like a current  like the actress Coral Brown thank you   to go and being Burgess he everything was  done with nothing was done in small measures   so he was sent to buy 40 Old atonian bow ties  and German Street and this very supercilious   assistant there looked at him up and down and the  man felt he had to explain he said oh they're not   for me and the man said that's what they  all say Sir yeah another question there from evidence the Trinity could you use the  microphone sorry the Trinity historian utrement   I've never heard mentioned in connection before  it was that a social thing perhaps as a trinity   hunt in the Lake District or do you think  there was some connection no Ultram was there   really because he was friendly with Stephen  ronselman and this was Ronson had a house on egg   so it was really a reading party they all went for  the screen party so some of the pictures there and   there's a fantastic album that runs when kept off  these trips and there's some other some wonderful   papers in the University Library here from a woman  called Ann Barnes who was also part of that Circle   but yeah that's the link yup down here like you  clearly know a great deal about spies what do you   think about Snowden do you think he's a traitor  or not Edward Snowden is a traitor absolutely   but one of my great gripes as a historian is  that so many of these documents are withheld   against the public records act and not  putting the archives are actually 80 of   them are destroyed with no record kept and so our  history is censored and as a result it encourages   whistleblowers like Snowden to come forward but  there's I think there's no doubt that Snowden was   not acting innocently a lot of the material went  and the fact he's living in Russia says it all so   I have no doubts I mean there are other innocent  other whistleblowers around but Snowden is not one   of them but it is I mean one of the extraordinary  things I've just done a book on Edward VII and I'd   asked for his protection file from 1932 most these  protection files are basically the detectives   saying I had to stay the night somewhere and I  charged so much or half of them are news cuttings   and natural police refused to to reveal this file  from 1932 because it would reveal put these safety   of the royal family at risk so the idea that  the way that the royal family is protected has   not changed since 1932 I think is more worrying  than the fact the document is there and this idea   that terrorists are hanging around the National  Archives reading documents to see how they might   kill the royal family it's a Slightly bizarre  one but that's the sort of stupidity that we get   and anyway it's one of the problems that we deal  with more questions so women down here in white broke sorry thank you mentioned the Trope that  were they let to escape or you know did they   get away with it there is the parallel isn't  there with philby and his escape from Beirut   ostensibly by a Russian freighter and the  interview with Nicolas Elliott Nicholas   Elliott heavily involved with Phil B it very  obvious parallel there oh absolutely they're   all like that so for those who don't know philby  had been under suspicion from 1951 MI5 knew that   he was a spy but didn't have the evidence MI6  were determined through his great friend Nicholas   Elliot to protect him he was given a basically  a job off the books to do some reporting was in   Beirut eventually he was confronted by Nicholas  Elliott he was given the opportunity to escape   he had no proper security or surveillance in  fact when they did the interview which was this   confession they left the windows open so it was  drowned out by the noise of the traffic which is   either incompetence or deliberate and of course  but philby escaped and that's what happened to   all of them Ken cross was given immunity blunt  was given immunity and I suspect all these other   people like Alistair Watson and others who were  interviewed were also given immunity and it was   Harold McMillan's great line when my Game Keeper  kills us a fox he buries it in the garden he   doesn't bring and dump it in the front hall and  that was actually the last they wanted was a show   trial in fact one of the ironies is that Burgess  kept actually taunted the British Authority thing   actually I don't think you've got anything on me  I think I might come home and blunt was appalled   by this because of course he might squeal  and so blunt persuaded him to stay in Russia   at that point people hadn't  realized what Blunt's rule was   yeah sorry about them yeah you say the British  have not released all the documents and that's   the major constraint on your work did the Russians  receive release any documents in the 90s when they   became and was that of were there anything on  the British spies in that I should have said   that the Russians were far more Cooperative than  the British were but of course they would be so   I think one has to be very careful yes there was  a whole program under glasnos of releasing some   of these documents that's why we know what was  taken out and published under the for basically   for money but under the auspices of the Russian  Secret Service this is game could be part of   propaganda I mean they're genuine documents but  of course they didn't reveal anything about the   Oxford ring or any of the other people anyone that  we didn't know about sorry everyone we knew about   was talked about but no one we didn't know about  was released so but that's very useful and that   again showed us exactly what was going out as I  say you know the there were actually lots and lots   of books of documents and in fact more recently  there's been stuff published by the Russians   on their own websites in the Soviet Union but  it's really difficult one of the problems about   writing intelligence history is your sources  are basically controlled by the organization   you're writing about it's a very and of course I  remember taking MI6 officers out to they always   wanted to go the most expensive restaurant  and I'd sit there and look at my notebook at   the end of the meal and I'd written absolutely  nothing down and I told them everything I knew yeah so one more down here all  right I've got to stop damage   yes this is the question the audit did the burgers  do damage very difficult to quantify there was an   attempt to do this after the war after they fled  all the codes were compromised so they had to be   changed very difficult to work out with all the  variables which agents have been betrayed but   again they had to pull agents back but I think  it's the long-term thing the fact that he you   know who had been compromised who he recruited who  had they recruited subsequently and I think also   the fact that it destroyed relationships between  the British and the Americans for a long time the   trust went and also trust and the establishment  the term The Establishment was coined actually   by The Spectator covering it and one of the  things that came out the white paper was called   the anyway it was a complete white whitewash  paper it was called and this incense began   the sense of this cover-up that went on  and all the themes of my books actually   are about the cover-up is often worse than  the original crime anyway I'm sorry we've   got to stop I think I'm signing books in the  Marquee and I'm very happy to answer questions   there or if you want to contact me through  website talk to you there thank you very much

Channel: Cambridge Development & Alumni Relations

Views: 5,160

Keywords: Alumni, Alumni Festival, Cambridge, University of Cambridge, Stalin's English man, Humanities, Social sciences, Catherine Galloway, Cambridge Union, ndrew Lownie, The Cambridge Spies'

Id: IcQi57oreVk

Length: 64min 42sec (3882 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 25 2022