Details

Subject(s)

• Espionage, Soviet—Great Britain—History [Browse]
• Spies—Soviet Union—Biography [Browse]
• Burgess, Guy 1911-1963 [Browse]

Author

• Hulbert, Jeff [Browse]

Library of Congress genre(s)

• Biographies [Browse]

Summary note

"Cambridge spy Guy Burgess was the supreme networker of his age. His contacts provided him with so many hard facts and so much insider gossip that his Moscow masters found it difficult to keep up with the flow of material. Stewart Purvis and Jeff Hulbert, who obtained the first recording of Burgess's voice from FBI files, have now discovered many more facts about Burgess and his contacts from previously secret sources. This book reveals how, at the heart of Burgess's network was an inner cell of communist spies and sympathisers, who were influential in the British media in the 1930s and '40s. The outer layer of his network was made up of contacts, ranging from two prime ministers to celebrities in the arts and show business, who unwittingly gave him the inside track on British life. This is the first full biography of Burgess and considers how this scruffy, smelly, sexually promiscuous, conspicuous drunk was such a successful Soviet spy that he was never challenged by Britain's spy-catchers. It culminates in new revelations about his final, lonely days in Moscow as 'the spy who knew nobody'."--Wheelers.co.nz.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (pages 417-424) and index.

Contents

• Introduction
• 1. 'A normal, healthy, English boy': a disrupted edication, 1911-30
• 2. 'A real rapscallion': a scholarship student goes rogue, 1930-36
• 3. 'Mr. Burgess is away today': serving more than one master, 1936-38
• 4. 'I am anxious to appoint a Mr Guy Burgess': British Intelligence embraces a KGB spy, 1938-42
• 5. 'Everyone under the Sun': networking at Westminster, 1941-44
• 6. 'An important promotion that can be put to valuable use': properly established in the establishment, 1944-50
• 7. 'Good reason to hope he would make a useful career': crucial decisions at the Foreign Office and MI5, 1950-51
• 8. 'This peculiarly British field of clounter-espionage: and then there were five spies, or was it six or seven? 1951 onwards
• 9. 'I had no idea how much I was loathed': settling into the USSR, 1951-56
• 10. 'I would rather like to go back to England': decline and death, 1956-63
• 11. 'Burgess is, of course, Brigadier Brilliant': towards the truth, 1951-2016.

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ISBN

• 9781849549134 ((hardback))
• 1849549133 ((hardback))

LCCN

2016435874

OCLC

923553744

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