Spy story

The Cambridge spy ring files that Whitehall won’t make public

Another biography of Guy Burgess. Readers and reviewers may be forgiven for wondering what more there is to say about the much investigated, albeit most enigmatic, member of the Cambridge spy ring.

Guy Burgess, the Spy Who Knew Everyone, by Stewart Purvis and Jeff Hulbert (Biteback) has just been published, less than five months after Andrew Lownie’sStalin’s Englishman (Hodder & Stoughton).

After Lownie and before Purvis/Hulbert, The National Archives at Kew released more than 400 hitherto secret files relating to Burgess and other members of the Cambridge ring (the latter biography’s main new take is that Burgess deliberately cultivated his sexual indiscretions and drunkeness to throw everyone off the track).