I have been fascinated with the Cambridge Spies (or Cambridge Spy Ring) ever since I read Kim Philby's My Silent War (read the review HERE). Philby became a communist and Soviet agent in the 1930s. He easily joined MI6 and rose to be head of British Counterintelligence. He seeked asylum in Moscow in 1963, where he lived until his death in 1988. The Cambridge Spies were spies from the United Kingdom, who spied for the Soviet Union during World War II and up to the early 1950s. Not a single one was prosecuted for spying.
The Cambridge Spies were discovered with the sudden disappearance of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess in 1951. Both of them were working for the Foreign Office at that time. They showed up and appeared in a press conference in the Soviet Union in 1956. With the flight of Burgess and Maclean, suspicion fell on Kim Philby (MI6) and Anthony Blunt (Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures). Both of them were friends of the missing diplomats. Kim Philby fled to the Soviet Union in 1963 when new evidence was discovered about his being a Soviet spy. Anthony Blunt confessed to British Intelligence but was never prosecuted and only publicly exposed in 1979. Another spy, John Cairncross, also confessed to British Intelligence but it remained secret for many years.
The term "Cambridge" refers to the recruitment of the Cambridge Spy Ring during their education at the University of Cambridge in the 1930s. Blunt was several years older than Burgess, Maclean, and Philby; he acted as a talent-spotter and recruiter for most of the group.
The Cambridge Spies were ideologically persuaded that Communism was the best available political system and much better than fascism. They had successful careers in different branches of the British government. The Cambridge Spies passed large amounts of intelligence to the Soviet Union.
As I said at the start, I have been reading a lot about them. I will update this post every time I get to finish a book about them. For the meantime, below is the list:
Books about the Cambridge Spies:
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[mybooktable book="stalins-englishman-guy-burgess-the-cold-war-and-the-cambridge-spy-ring" display="summary" buybutton_shadowbox="false"]
[mybooktable book="my-5-cambridge-friends-burgess-maclean-philby-blunt-and-cairncross-by-their-kgb-controller" display="summary" buybutton_shadowbox="false"]
[mybooktable book="my-silent-war-the-autobiography-of-a-spy" display="summary" buybutton_shadowbox="false"]
[mybooktable book="guy-burgess-the-spy-who-knew-everyone" display="summary" buybutton_shadowbox="false"]
[mybooktable book="deceiving-the-deceivers-kim-philby-donald-maclean-and-guy-burgess" display="summary" buybutton_shadowbox="false"]
Related books about the Cambridge Spies:
[mybooktable book="a-brief-history-of-the-spy" display="summary" buybutton_shadowbox="false"]
[mybooktable book="gchq" display="summary" buybutton_shadowbox="false"]
[mybooktable book="spycatcher-the-candid-autobiography-of-a-senior-intelligence-officer" display="summary" buybutton_shadowbox="false"]
[mybooktable book="the-art-of-betrayal-the-secret-history-of-mi6-life-and-death-in-the-british-secret-service" display="summary" buybutton_shadowbox="false"]
[mybooktable book="defend-the-realm-the-authorized-history-of-mi5" display="summary" buybutton_shadowbox="false"]
elendara
http://elendara.com/cambridge-spies/
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