Stalins Englishman, Andrew Lownie
Stalins Englishman, Andrew Lownie
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Stalin's Englishman
Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring

Author: Andrew Lownie

Narrator: Steven Crossley

Unabridged: 14 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 01/31/2017

Synopsis

Guy Burgess was the most important, complex, and fascinating of "The Cambridge Spies"—Maclean, Philby, Blunt—brilliant young men recruited in the 1930s to betray their country to the Soviet Union. 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 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.

Through interviews with more than a hundred people who knew Burgess personally, many of whom have never spoken about him before, and the discovery of hitherto secret files, Stalin's Englishman brilliantly unravels the many lives of Guy Burgess in all their intriguing, chilling, colorful, tragi-comic wonder.

About Andrew Lownie

Andrew Lownie first became interested in the Cambridge Spy Ring when, as President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1984, he arranged an international seminar on the subject. After graduating from Cambridge University, where he won the Dunster Prize for History, Lownie went on to take a postgraduate degree in history at Edinburgh University. He is now a successful literary agent, and has written or edited several books, including an acclaimed biography of John Buchan.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Sketchbook

This judicious and crackling bio of Guy Burgess, a notorious player among the Cambridge spy ring (Maclean, Philby, Blunt and dozens of others), helps us understand why England lost 2 World Wars and also created the unsolvable muddle in the mideast. If you went to the right schools, had the right acc......more

Goodreads review by Cold War Conversations Podcast

Intriguing, chilling, and colourful insight into the most famous Cold War espionage case. Guy Burgess has often been thought as the least damaging of the Cambridge spies, however Andrew Lownie’s book argues strongly against this view. Burgess himself is a complex person, charming and repulsive in equa......more

Goodreads review by Lewis

I had a vague knowledge of the Cambridge spies, i think mostly i'd heard of them secondhand via John LeCarre. This excellent and very thorough book set me straight and filled in the gaps in my knowledge. Most fascinating to me was the attempt to answer the question of why Burgess did what he did? Wh......more

Goodreads review by Ian

If Andrew Lownie, wearing his agent's hat, had tried to flog this as a work of fiction I suspect some publishers would have rejected it as being too far-fetched; the reader would be unable to suspend disbelief. But it's fact, and likely to be as near the truth as is possible in the murky world of es......more

Goodreads review by Patrick

I always wondered about Burgess and I gleaned that he was a mess of a person - until now! I hav read the biog. and it tells me in a clear detailed manner that he was a very well educated but slovenly character who wielded his craft of soviet spying with finesse. His life after fleeing to Moscow was......more

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