Stalin's Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess
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- čas přidán 12. 10. 2016
- About the book: Guy Burgess was the most important, complex and fascinating of 'The Cambridge Spies' - Maclean, Philby, Blunt - all 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.
About the author: Andrew Lownie was born in Kenya, brought up in Bermuda and educated in Asheville, North Carolina before attending the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. A former journalist for The London Times and the British representative for the Washington-based National Intelligence Centre, he helped set up the Spy Museum in Washington. Now a successful literary agent and the President of The Biographers Club , his books include an acclaimed life of the writer and former Governor General of Canada John Buchan.
This book lecture took place at The Institute of World Politics on October 11, 2016.
Fascinating examination of the life of Guy Burgess. The author has dived deeper than any one else. A brilliant achievement.
An excellent account, very accurate and put over in the video with much clarity and knowledge. Thank you.
Wishing you well writing the next upcoming book on the Mountbatten’s!
I''m sorry, but the gentlemen in the public asking the question should let the speaker answer, he just likes hearing himself talk, it's annoying
&kljllj
Excellent talk, very informative. Obviously thoroughly researched.
15:15 turn off your phone before a lecture or presentation by someone else, please.
The questioner from about 50.00 onwards really loves the sound of his own voice...!
That man is probably retired CIA or historian or author who wrote about this himself who saw things from the American side, more than the British side. He made some good points. He knew a lot about McClain - and that makes sense, since McClain was the one reporting out of Washington DC. You can tell how irritated the American intelligence questioners are about how Britain handled this spy ring, both before and after the discovery of the ring, because a lot of sensitive American information which hurt America's foreign policy and internal public safety policy was compromised.
Really really annoying.
Well, actually ….
Is “spy-splainer” a thing? It is now.
There's always at least one at these things.
Fascinating story.
Almost chocked at the "Beatty, hero of Jutland" bit.
As much a hero to the KMS as Burgess was to the USSR.
A bit boring with the person kidnapping the session in the last 15 minutes. To much lecturing for me.
I don't know that the eyesight excuse wasn't a play on words: "Louche" comes from an Old French word meaning "squinting" or "one-eyed." What it means, however, is "disreputable, sleazy," etc. This is the kind of wordplay that an Eton College master who had to kowtow to a 13-year-old for whatever reason, would have employed, in my opinion.
good point.
Wish we could see the photos better! Edit: Hey, The IWP...that phone call and the woman who sits down to work on her laptop in front of Mr. Lownie....what’s up with that?? Very distracting. Hope someone apologized to Andrew!
Man, I get tired of Q&A sessions at the end of these lectures. It should be very clearly stated to the audience that unless you have a genuine question to ask, just shut up! We don't need opinions or conjectures put to the author. That can be done privately after the lecture has ended.
Lownie's body language tells me that he was tiring of that pompous *ss. They needed a moderator. Very interesting talk
"If you can't belong you betray" so true.
or you say to "f... off everyone"....
nonsence; betrayal is a conscious act that is helped by "belonging"
@@glenncalderwood8945 Disagree. If you dont belong you dont feel any pity nor affinity with those you are betraying. You feel a distance from those you betray and are not emotionally affected.The act becomes justifiable to them. It explains why so many leftists hate their nation because they feel they 'dont belong'
Great piece of English scholarship
Well spoken author.
He’s a ponce
As they say in France: "un homme inverti en vaut deux!"
Burgess became one of the most powerful foreign office and parliamentary bureaucrats in the UK postwar. That was largely because of combination of long hours, competence and the social graces vital in media, the foreign office and parliamentary staff. Burgess appeared a dedicated public servant working 16 hours a day. What he did after hours drinking in dive bars, socialising with undesirables, conducting affairs and encounters with everything that moved of whatever sex or denomination was largely unknown at the time. like Donald McLean it was just assumed by most in Britains compartmentalised society and public service to be the result of overwork, pressure and the cold war. They were effective diplomat serving British interest in the eyes of the wider Briitish elite , interested in avoiding war as usual , let alone nuclear war with Russian and China at all costs. At that time and probably rightly, even Churchill believed the Russian army on the evidence of WW2 was unstoppable, and that was confirmed, by Korea in 1950-1 with MacArthur twice almost dirven into the sea primarily by North Korean troops fighting to Soviet doctrine and backed by the Russian flown Migs in NK colours north of the 38th parallel. Transferred to the UK embassy in Washington, Burgess appeared to fail totally, fall apart. Yet the British Government, had decided to risk sending Burgess to Washington and NY, at the point the the Korean War has broken out at near WW3 level. The US Army is being led by its greatest general McArthur who at 70, after running the moral and physical reconstruction of Japan, was in,
retirement in Asian hotels. Those bar girls from Manilla , Shanghai and Tokyo, always exercised a powerful and possibly necessary attraction to Generals. MacArthur and General Ridgeway were fighting up and down the Korean Pennisular being smashed back as hard as the German Army and SS in Russia when Rossovolsolosky and Zurkov broke out. For the Atlee Government the big issue was could MacArthur and Le May be controlled , would they implement the escalation of an effective nuclear tactical defence radiation belt defence zone and extension of all out war to the whole Chinese mainland.
This comment lost any credibility because of poor grammar. Wouldn't one require a certain level of education to know these things ?
Just another wannabe pretender.
Frederick Miles , dropping names, long winded excuses and lack of basic education, all hallmarks of compulsive fabricators.
This may not be the case........but ;-)
I actually don't know what you are on about. I was educated at TBHS 1970-74. UE in 1973 and First in History. Knox College, OU 75-6 and completed a BA in History and Political Science at Vic Wellington Uni in 1978 (graduated 1979). In 1980-1 I followed that with a MA at University of Canterbury, Christchurch- NZ graduating 2/2. The listed supervisors were Mary Ensor (Sparrow) and Nigel Roberts and the course supervisor was Keith Ovenden, who given my interest in Transport policy and British Politics is the more impt fig. In the papers B NZ Politics and B+ NZ Foreign Policy. The significant work on that course in my case was on Energy and Transport Policy and the following year I worked in Waimare for OU and the councils on Planned hydro schemes re SI Rivers. This overlapped with the 1982Falklands War. I grew up in South Timaru about 200 yards from Fellow South School students Susan Begg and Martin Ross the two brightest Timaruvians of my generation. Susan Begg was in the same class at South and for a while I was her only equal Begg graduated in 1982 with the highest Canterbury University Double First in Economics and Chemistry of the year and was actually the lead Treasury economist in the 1984-6 Economics Reform package rather than the politically ambivalent R Kerr or the dry R Deane.
I also have a Canterbury B.Com in Accountancy completed 2005 awarded 2006 although I am more of an economist largely studied at Vic , I did Pallot and Hamptons papers at Can't and Economist Law at Vic with a Treasury lecturer. I accepted a second Honors degree from Canterbury in 2011. Neville Bennett was the supervisor and I was his only pupil in 2006. The problems their is I am a Defence and Transport specialist engaged in real research and warfare as all serious defence writing and journalism and never saw my job as an editor or student to engage in the relentless polishing and removal of typo, grammatical and spacing corrections In actual defence journalism and academic papers, how sources are weighted and assessed is different and entering a first draft fast, showing tech, doctrinal, political and 3D ability rather than traditional and modern academic competence and sensitivity is the issue.
@@frederickmiles327 Well said that man ..someone who works hard and understands problems rather than crosses t's
and dots I's . I never understood why a perfect spelt report is better than 1 with a few spelling mistakes..it means hope for us dyslexic ts. Greetings Sir .
Working 16 hrs a day? Doing what? Whoring himself?
Burgess was sleeping with the enemy on a continuous basis, an obvious member of a sex cult - which helped Jeffrey Epstein rise to power. They did all they could to destroy the Monarchy from inside out because they resented King George's acumen, they resented his idealism, which was good. And they figured more destruction could be enjoyed with his brother Edward taking his role - obviously part of that sex cult, married to a man who dressed like a woman. The people of England could not stand him and he was replaced by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, with her mother Queen Elizabeth I and Prince Phillip her closest confidentes. Queen Elizabeth’s children embattled the most difficult circumstances- all because they were born to serve their country and they sought out to do it to the best of their ability. It truly would be a much tumultuous world had it not been for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as the Servant Queen.
I'm in the US, and I found: "Stalin's Englishman : Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge spy ring" by the same author. Is it the same book?
I think that the lesson of the Cambridge Five is that people who choose personal ideology over love are warped individuals, not stalwart heroes.
Sarah Jacobs i
Remember that the Cambridge Five came of age during the Depression. Thirty percent unemployment, failing wages and bank failures led many to believe that capitalism was failing. Communism was a new ideology. It promised equality, a stark contrast to the huge disparities between rich and poor. The Communists supported unions, the dignity of work. In the US, they championed civil rights. The horrors of Stalin were not known, and the failures of a central planned economy were not yet evident. The Communist Party had a huge following in the 1930s.
Also, in the 1930s, the Communists were the only nation and party fighting Facism. The Russians backed the Spanish Republicans and fought against Franco/the Nazis/Mussolini in the Spanish Civil War. Meanwhile the US, Britain and France refused to get involved. The supporters of the democratically elected left leaning government got slaughtered.
I can see why Communism was enticing to the Cambridge Five.
@@chrisstroh4776
That generation also had relatives who fought and died, or were wounded in body and/or mind, in the monsterous tragedy of WWI, making them fear, quite rightly, the outbreak of a second world war. They had more sense about the reality and consequences of modern warfare than most people do today because they had been directly touched by it.
So many names... What were MI 5 and Special Branch doing in those years ???
Buggering each other, playing cover up, getting pissed and spying for everyone and anyone. School and establishment before country.
Mi5 was being run by the most successful so iet spy of the lot,Roger Hollis...which is part of the reason they got away with it..
I believe Burgess failed to achieve a "First", which was a sign that his academic promise and life at Cambridge was in a downward spiral, younger, more capable scholars like John Cornford (who died in the Spanish Civil War) were now the center of attention. Burgess after that is living sort of without any plan among his friends, mostly fellow homosexuals, often outstaying his welcome, his life clearly derailed. At this point the only source of his self-esteem are probably the KGB handlers and the work he does for them.
Great vid, would be good to get some tips so my vids get to this level. Let me know what I can do better in my comments
There are point in History where everything changes . The announcement of the BBC that two diplomats had taken the cross channel ferry in late 1951 and disappeared as one of them. The beginning of the end of Britain as an independent force or any understanding of the real policies of the far left Labour 45-51 which recognised China and aimed for a defence relationship with Russia, which was viewed as an unstoppable conventional military power. In motor racing there are three critical race dates. Morocco 1958, Italy, Monza 1961 where the heir apparent, Von Trips, who would probably have led the Porsche F1 team in 62 and Spa 1962, Jim Clark's first win. Clark who was educated at Loretto, in 1949-51 was a difficult figure who belonged in the age of Seaman, Hawthorn and Collins. No one noticed motor racing, again, until Jarama 1968, when the dark green BRM of Rodriquez leads off the line.
Any insight into who the 5th member was?
How is it possible he is still undiscovered
John Cairncross, finally confirmed in 1990
If they were all so intelligent and at the top of their class, how is it that they became Stalinists? Very bright, very bright. Maybe there's a difference between being of the ruling class and knowing how to pass examinations and actually being intelligent.
Guy Burgess in many ways a important Foreign Office and Government policy maker and influence on Atlee and Antony Eden, as well as a spy leaking critical foreign policy and defense secrets to Stalin, Mao and the NK criminal govt during the Korean war. He had been recalled and final dispatched to Washington, two days after the start of the Korean as a First sec at the British Embassy ( Norman Polmar and Allen in the Merchants of Treason'. USNI. Annapolis say he was still a First secretary , not the third secretary as described in the complete retrospective rewrite of history, after the shock defection of Britain"s greatest diplomat in 1951) to assess the risk of nuclear war with Russia and to report back on the stability of the the top USAF and US Army Generals , MacArthur and Curtis Le May and whether the decision about using Nuclear weapons was effectively under Truman and civilian control . In 1951 the bombshell in the UK establishment was the disappearance of Guy Burgess a close friend of the highest in the land , a man admired by Churchill and Eden and regarded by Hailsham as a civilised and charming man. Burgess was not at the time suspected of espionage. Donald McLean was, and to the US FBI/CiA Philby's guilt was clear but Kim Philby was a stylish and ingraciating double agent was a sinister minor figure, blown up in importance as the counter image of James Bond 707 and John Le Care, 'Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Sailor' established to cover the real catastrophe of Burgess, key diplomatic and defence betrayal. The idea of Burgess an old Etonian of impeccable, class and academic achievement, as a communist spy was in many ways an unimaginable idea in the England of 1951, the post war attempt to develop good relations with Russia and China for trade and even more to balance the dangerously reckless and irresponsible Americans, had been widely and openly promoted by Burgess and it included many dangerous and reckless arms transfers of which the engines for the Mig 15 which outclassed the US fighters in Korea , was undoubtedly only one of the the significant transfers. Burgess was and in many ways in the late 1940s and Korean War one of the the most powerful British bureaucrat as the private secretary to the Foreign mInisters of Cabinet rank as Hector O'Neil often stood in for Ernest Bevin, and had total access to defence and foreign office files.
Philby shared many a long liquor soaked lunch with anglophile Angleton (and other top CIA) talking shop. Pretty sure that puts him high on the worst intelligence failures ratings table for the West.
Similar massive penetration occurred throughout the 1930s, WW2 and Cold War in the minor white English speaking allies , Canada, Aus and NZ as the backdoor to the UK/US and indeed started with the exodus from the Soviet Union from 1918- which was part genuine, part obligation and part temporary displacement as in all such disaporias.. On interesting thing is that Philby / Burgess displayed Fascist / Nazi public sympathies in the late 1930's. The point about that is that such attitudes were common among the business and social elite and at Eton/ Harrow was in some senses the only acceptable attitude in 1938. Similar viewpoints existed throughout the white commonwealth and the US, however forgotten, now.
Any evidence for such accusations?
Andrew Lownie presentation gives plenty of evidence.. The pointless sacrifice of the best in WW1 say at Verdun , Gallipoli and after that the disorder of affected and maimed on sex life and happiness in the 1930s and again in the 1940s austerity state of Britain, which did not a piece all that housing remained poor and too the most idealistic the new educational system failed to achieve the class leveling expected. And of course with the phobia around the bomb and the poorly fought , led and misguided Vietnam war, there were more recruits.
NZ and Australia's defence agreements notably the crucial 1951 Anzus agreement was a direct response to the internal and external communist threat. The invasion of Korea, the coup in Czechoslovakia in 1949 and East Germany and massive communist inspired industrial disorder, in Australia between 1919-1939, half the coal required for industry and the Railways was not mined or delivered due to industrial action. Destroyers took 8/9 years to build due to notorious painters and dockers union. In 1951 Menzies the Australian PM put forward his legislation to ban the Australian Communist Party .In NZ the 1951 coal miners, and waterfront strike came close to crippling the economy a National emergency was declared with troops manning ports, loading of coal, meat carcases etc The NZ government feared that supplies of coal and overseas trade to New Zealand could be disrupted by crippled shipping and railways for up to 3 years. National Ministerial comment in correspondence between Ministers and NZR CME and Management in 1950/51 relating to converting and ordering oil fired steam engines and diesels to reduce strategic coal dependence ( NZ National archives, Molesworth, Wellington files relating NIJA order 50/51).
The Anzus Treaty was described to US Senate Foreign relations Committee by John Foster Dulles as the official extension of the Monroe Doctrine to the US closest allies NZ and Australia, confirming US Policy, since 1908 to extend the Monroe Doctrine and the US sphere of influence to cover Australasia as well as Latin America. Dulles said the US obligations under Anzus were not less than the Nato obligation. it was is fact the hardest and most indivisible US defense pact of all, with in 1951 the US considering the defence of NZ Australia against the 'common danger' ( Chinese and Russian Communism), in the Pacific area as invoking an automatic US defense response and the issues of congressional and Presidential approval were actually intended to make automatic action to defend Australia easier and faster than the Nato system. The doctrine and also Treaty was also intended to give the same protection to Japan and Philipines as the US Protectorate and the Anzus Treaty is specifically worded to embody the aims and wording of the Monroe Doctrine and Manilla Pact in 1946, but is not related to Seato, which was evolved with a similar intended structure to Nato in 1949-1954 but was not ever formed in its intended form. In 1954 Seato was established as a 'shell organisation' to disguise the fact there was no real Seato pact or structure. The UK Atlee government, disqualified Britain by recognizing Communist China in 1949, on the advice of Foreign Office Asia Specialist Guy Burgess on the advantage of being the first to develop trade with China and the needs of HK an entry port. The Korean War was unanticipated and by 1952 the substantial British shipping trade with China was attacked by new Senator JFK and Robert Kennedy wrote a report on this scandal as an assistant to Joe McCarthy Notorious anti communist Investigations committee. RFKs report into Britain's trade in US lives is considered the only serious work ever done by Joe McCarthys committee (C.Mathews Robert Kennedy. Simon &Shulster.NY 2017, p113-14) and in May 1954 British PM Winston Churchill twice refused to join Eisenhower in a Joint declaration of war on North Vietnam, after the French colonial army collapsed at Dien Bein Phin. Churchill thought Vietnam already a lost cause and Australian opinion was divided. Had Britain supported the US, Eisenhower would have declared war against Hanoi in 1954, and the United States would have commenced open war against Vietnam.
Can't wait for Putin's Englishman
0:35 ~ END
MY SILENT WAR by Kim Philby--"During my youth in the 1930s two paths were presented to me---the rank appeasement of nazis by PMs Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain or the opposition of USSR. But for the power of the USSR and the Communist idea, the whole world would now be ruled by hitler and hirohito. It is a matter of great pride to me that I was invited at so early an age, to play my infinitesimal part in building up that power. How, where and when I became a member of the Soviet intelligence service is a matter to myself and my comrades. I will only say that when the proposition was made to me, I did not hesitate. One does not look twice at an offer of enrollment in an elite force."
"Homosexuality is the Best All Around Cover an Agent Ever Had"
-William Burroughs / "Naked Lunch"
Burgess doesn't seem to fit the rest of the Cambridge spies, the outwardly appearance is that he was more of a nuisance than a valuable asset for the Soviets - or the British as a mater of fact - and yet the Russians treated him exceptionally well and did not hesitate a second to welcome him when he showed up, quite unexpectedly, on the side of McLean, in Russia. That makes one wonder if Burgess actually had the most substance as a spy, objectively analyzed, for the Russians, of all the Cambridge Five.
au contraire - the Russians saw Burgess as the leader of the Cambridge 5 - he took insane risks to get what the Kremlin wanted.
Dear Lord, please send us once more spies like these.
The telegraph review of Andrew Lownie book calls it 'startingly revisionist' But in my view not remotely enough. As Lownie admits only a fraction of the degree of the influence, role and evil of Burgess has emerged. The telegraph review reflects , Burgess view that he was, a patriot, a diplomat, a hero in the old fashioned sense, a man of immense influence in the late 1940s socialist Atlee government. In truth, he was for two years in the late 1940s, one of the most powerful bureaucrats in London and quite often the effective, foreign secretary when Ernie Bevin was away, Burgess as PA to Bevins deputy had unrestricted access to all UK/US Defense/ Foreign Affairs and Naval files for those 2 years and that would have include many critical US state, defense, naval and nuclear documents and designs, guy Burgess presented himself as a great patriot and supporter of the RN. Few people realise he was gay, he was not an effeminate, limp or anything recognizable as gay and would have hated the modern idea. He was an incredibly active bisexual, deeply interested in anybody good looking or well connected male or female, for unlimited sex not just a drink, coffee or a chat. In fact evil matching Burgess has never walked the earth. Alone he contributed more to the decline of Britain than any man, and as a very influential force in recognition of Communist China against massive USA opposition and the embarrassment of the actual Foreign Sec, Ernest Bevin. Burgess used disingenious and brilliant arguments that have, to some extent driven important trade, military and political developments and Commonwealth history since; Burgess was a seducer, blackmailer and influencer of anybody potentially useful and whatever sexual orientation and was in some ways even, the sexually active defacto of leading Tory politicians wives and daughters, as well as the most notorious bisexual in history and his contribution to the rot of all human and moral and military values in the West is immense.
You have profound intellectual problems, old boy...I suspect that you must be a Bible belter, based upon your insularity of vision, for it is clear that you know NOTHING about Britain and its history...I sympathize with you...them ole Kansas plains must get mighty boring, well hush mah mouth...
Interesting. Can you expand on destruction of british ships?
@@Davidka1978Xoroshiy Very difficult to get actual data on anything touching the Nelson legend today, given its importance to the UKs faded influence and legend. During my studies of cold war came across photography in respected naval journals of old store ships from the age of fighting sale being burnt in the late 1940s and also photos of French warships of the Napoleonic age being scuttled around 1949.
Its obvious that British Intelligence regarded homosexuality as a great bonus in an agent, clearly they assumed, and rightly so, that state secrets change hands easiest in bed. One wonders that actually to what length they had gone to recruit specifically homosexual bright young men, as the examples of Burgess, McLane and Blunt shows. Philby in this respect was at a disadvantage, or perhaps Burgess "helped" him out by telling his superiors that he had a relationship with Philby.
No it would never have been seen as desirable. A lot of ambivalent people would have got in as a result of greatly expanded war time recruitment needs. For most of the twentieth century a lot of people in M15 and MI6 would be ex detectives, former Indian service police and RAF etc. In terms of linquists and intercepts the sort of intelligence needed to be competent in Russian and some other languages, means your dealing with people who are unlikely to be discovered unless there unlimited drunks, druggies or have the other usual vices in spades. In the modern publci school where high IQ rather than money is the primary prerequsite for selection and unless you are royal, fairly high IQ is a prerequsite to get into the school and with an IQ of over 125 in the top 5% any sort of odd, dubious or even criminal activity is immensely hard to detect even in teenagers. The entry of girls to boys public schools from the early 1970s was to counter the problem, in part in many major public schools.
John Cairncross.
I liked the Walker Brothers. Good singers
I must tell you because of these homosexuals the Foreign Office really vets applicants about their sexuality. It happened to my father when he applied to Foreign Office.
According to this author; Andrew Lownie asserts that retiring as CMDR in the Navy denotes an unsuccessful career.
This guy thinks like the elitists he writes about.
He'd probably fit right in with the "Cambridge Five".
You sound like an insecure, bitter person, causing you to make inappropriate comments. Ironically, judging by your comment, it is you who would have fit right in with Cambridge Five, not by social standing (you are obviously pretty jealous of their social standing) but by anger against the rich.
Jack Hunter Douglas Fairbanks
I never understood the attraction to communism.
It's a 'dog eat dog' world.
Because capitalism is good Samaritans unselfishly helping each other, right?
They kept destroying competitors in ussr.
Much like Capitalism!
Hilarious! Upper middle class Pythonesque behaviour. Burgess was the arch leg puller. Hiding his spying in plain sight by using his outrageous behaviour to mask his treacherous activities. I suppose his contempt for his colleagues is justified inasmuch as a more stable and intellectual fellow secret service employee, the Fellow and scholar, Hugh Trevor Roper, had the same contempt for almost everybody in the organisations they worked for. Trevor Roper's superiors were so moronic and Trevor Roper's so contemptuous of them, that he was once accused of treason. One of the secret service bosses used to walk backwards from aircraft as a device to avoid identification. Trevor Roper's acid wit is well worth savouring in his various letters and essays on the Cambridge spies and his classic 1947 book, The Last Days of Hitler. He has also written essays on Canaris and Philby. Well worth a look.
£24.00? After all we're not Communists.
Typical know it all at the during Q&A telling the scholar his business. gah.
K
Sounds like a triple agent to me.
Are all Brits homosexuals?
Yeah; but don't worry, bigots like you are quite safe...