Guy Burgess

British spy

• Born: April 16, 1911
• Birthplace: Devonport, Devon, England
• Died: August 30, 1963
• Place of death: Moscow, Soviet Union (now in Russia)

Cause of notoriety: Burgess was a double agent for the Soviet Union, and his espionage damaged relations between U.S. and British intelligence agencies.

Active: c. 1934-1951

Locale: Cambridge and London, England; Washington, D.C.; and Moscow, Soviet Union

Early Life

Guy Burgess (gi FRAN-sihs BUHR-jihs) was the son of Royal Navy commander Malcolm Kingsford de Moncy and Evelyn Mary (née Gilman) Burgess. He attended Eton College and the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, but his poor eyesight precluded a navy career. Instead, in 1930, he enrolled at Trinity Hall College, Cambridge, where he developed the behaviors and made the personal contacts that would shape the rest of his life.

Burgess quickly established a reputation at Cambridge as a brilliant student, a flamboyant homosexual, and an incipient alcoholic. He was introduced by fellow student Anthony Blunt to the prestigious Cambridge debating society known as the Apostles, a group that also included Kim Philby and Donald Duart Maclean, men who would later become spies with Burgess. Burgess also joined the Communist Party. Many members of his generation believed that communism offered the best hope of combating the rise of fascism in Europe, but in Burgess’s own case, the rebellious nature of the act may have been equally appealing.

Espionage Career

Burgess’s academic career failed to develop, but in 1936, he joined the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as a producer. In this position, he met many of the leading political figures of his day, including British prime ministerWinston Churchill. Sometime during the early 1930’s, Burgess was also recruited as a secret agent of the Soviet Union, becoming a member of a ring of spies that later came to be labeled variously as the Cambridge Five, the Cambridge Apostles, and the Cambridge Ring. (Whether Burgess became a spy in Cambridge or on a trip he took to Moscow in 1934 is unclear.) Publicly, Burgess renounced his membership in the Communist Party and took increasingly pro-German positions.

In another public move, Burgess joined the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in late 1938. In his new employment, he was able to win an intelligence position for Philby, who had also become a Soviet agent. When Burgess’s own job was eliminated in 1940, he returned to the BBC. Subsequently, he held several positions with the British Foreign Office in which he routinely passed secret documents to his Soviet controllers. His final posting in the early 1950’s took him to the British embassy in Washington, D.C. There, Burgess lived with Philby, who was unable to curb his colleague’s increasingly outrageous behavior; Burgess was sent home in 1951.

During this time, British intelligence officials were growing increasingly concerned over security leaks from the foreign office. Their suspicions were focused not on Burgess, however, but on another officer and former Apostle: Maclean. It was later revealed that Maclean had also been recruited as a Soviet agent during the 1930’s. In the official British reconstruction of events, Philby became aware of the investigation and ordered Burgess to help Maclean escape. The two disappeared on May 25, 1951, but Burgess unexpectedly accompanied Maclean all the way to the Soviet capital of Moscow, where the two reappeared publicly in 1956. Burgess spent the rest of his life in the Soviet Union, where he died at a relatively early age of a heart attack apparently brought on by alcoholism.

Impact

Although Guy Burgess helped damage relations between British and American intelligence agencies, the extent of his impact on world affairs is unclear. The secrets he passed to the Soviets were presumably important, but his most significant gift to his country’s enemies was probably his recruitment of Philby into British intelligence. The issue is clouded by suspicions that British intelligence officials may have been aware of the Cambridge Ring earlier than was officially admitted. If this scenario was the case, the trio could have been used by British official to channel disinformation—that is, false and misleading documents—to the Soviets.

Burgess’s impact on the British public is clearer. The treason of Burgess and his fellow agents (Blunt would be publicly unmasked only in 1979) was a blow to the morale of ordinary British citizens, and the resulting climate of dismay is reflected in spy novels written by John le Carré, Len Deighton, Graham Greene, and John Banville. Burgess himself is the subject of an acclaimed 1983 television film titled An Englishman Abroad, the screenplay of which was written by playwright Alan Bennett.

Bibliography

Boyle, Andrew. The Fourth Man: The Definitive Account of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, and Donald Maclean and the Man Who Recruited Them to Spy for Russia. New York: Dial Press, 1979. The book that publicly revealed the identity of the fourth member of the Cambridge Ring, Anthony Blunt. Includes a bibliography.

Hamrick, S. J. Deceiving the Deceivers: Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, and Guy Burgess. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. Revisionist account suggesting that British intelligence knew about the spying activities of Philby, Maclean, and Burgess earlier than previously revealed. Includes detailed notes.

Modin, Yuri. My Five Cambridge Friends: Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1994. Memoir by the KGB agent who handled the Cambridge Ring, managed Burgess and Maclean’s defection, and befriended Burgess in Moscow.

Piadyshev, Boris. “’Burgess. Guy Burgess.’ (In the Service of a Foreign Power).” International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy, and International Relations 51 (2005): 179-190. Informal memoir by a retired Soviet diplomat.