"Privileged people make the best traitors", as a soviet envoy in England reported back to a baffled Stalin. "Solidarity between homosexuals can override other loyalties", as British security was warned, just before the defection of Burgess and Maclean in 1951. To this day, the Cambridge spy ring can still turn our stomachs - five men who should have been hanged, drawn and quartered, but who were allowed to live on, in peace and plenty, one of them being appointed Surveyor of the King's Pictures, if you please, and another one claiming never to have been a spy at all ("Just working for peace"). Yik!
Yet it's the iniquity that makes the entertainment value. It can be good escapism to sample life at the top in mid-century, with Guy Burgess as the most shameless enjoyer of the fleshpots, while claiming to be a good, plain Marxist man of the people. He is also the star of the show, outshining the other four in character, personality and presence, breaking the rule that says a good spy is the face you don't notice in a crowd.
But Burgess was a rule-breaker in his blood and bones. From Trinity (and the Apostles) to MI6, the BBC, the Foreign Office and the Washington embassy, Burgess blundered about, often drunk out of his mind, ruffling all manner of important feathers, but somehow charming his way out of trouble. In MI6, he recruits Philby to the team, but... ("And there's always a 'but' with Philby" says the narrator), the new man is sacked for interfering with a corporal.
Interesting commentary from some elderly survivors, including Churchill's niece Clarissa with some tart comments, and others who might be described as fag-hags, while spy-novelist Nigel West makes a good choice for Greek chorus.
