In the early 1930s, five high-flying Cambridge University students were recruited to become Soviet spies.
These five men enjoyed decades-long careers at the top of the British establishment and were some of the most successful double agents in history.
In part one of this three-part mini-series, we see how it all got started.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are talking about a group of Soviet spies.
[00:00:26] But they weren’t your average Soviets spies; they were members of Britain’s ruling elite.
[00:00:33] Highly educated, upper-class men thought to be the best and brightest of British society. Men who, to the outside world, were at the very top of the British establishment, but behind closed doors, they fed information to an ideological enemy for a period spanning three decades.
[00:00:53] As this is such an incredible story, with so many weird and wonderful facts, twists, turns, stories and personalities, this is going to be a three part mini-series on the group dubbed “the Cambridge Five”.
[00:01:07] Today, in episode one, we will take a look at the backgrounds and recruitment of these men, of these spies, with a little historical context to help us properly appreciate the magnitude of what they did.
[00:01:20] In part-two, we’ll look at their actual spywork, the ingenious ways they did it, and, of course, the top secret information they stole.
[00:01:29] And in part-three, we’ll get into their downfall, how their story ended, and how, in some respects, they got away with it.
[00:01:37] OK then, let’s get into it and talk about the Cambridge Five - the Soviet spy ring hidden in plain sight.
[00:01:48] It was a July afternoon in London’s Regents Park, in 1934.
[00:01:54] It was a clear, hot day, and the sun was high in the sky.
[00:01:59] Birds chirped, and children played.
[00:02:03] Park benches lined the paths, and Londoners lounged lazily in the shade.
[00:02:10] A 22-year-old man named Kim Philby, looking rather nervous, made his way through the park wearing a shirt and tie, despite the sticky summer heat.
[00:02:21] He hadn’t planned to come to the park that day, but set off after his wife had told him, rather mysteriously, that she had arranged for him to meet, and I’m quoting directly, ‘a man of decisive importance’.
[00:02:36] She told him nothing more, only the time and location.
[00:02:41] Not knowing what to expect, he sat down on a bench and tried to blend in.
[00:02:48] After a few minutes he saw a stocky, short man approaching.
[00:02:53] He introduced himself as ‘Otto’, and spoke with a strong eastern European accent.
[00:03:01] Looking around, Otto made small talk and complained that he hated London.
[00:03:06] He much preferred Paris, he said.
[00:03:09] It wasn’t long before Otto cut to the chase, he stopped with the small talk and revealed the true purpose of the meeting.
[00:03:18] Otto turned and said that someone like Philby, someone from his family background, could be of great use. He could make a much greater impact than a mere ‘run-of-the-mill party member’.
[00:03:33] Philby nodded, saying nothing.
[00:03:36] “You must stop communicating with all the friends I tell you to if you want to go ahead with this”, Otto said.
[00:03:43] Eventually the men came to an agreement, and a few moments later Otto left in one direction, Philby the other, and the two men slipped back into the anonymous hustle and bustle of central London.
[00:03:58] Officially, Otto was working at a nearby university; unofficially, he was Arnold Deutsch, a spy recruiter for the Soviets.
[00:04:09] Deutsch had just recruited Kim Philby: the most famous British double-agent of all time, the biggest traitor, some say, in British history.
[00:04:21] That afternoon in Regent’s Park was the first step in the story of the Cambridge Five.
[00:04:27] So, who were the Cambridge Five?
[00:04:30] They are Kim Philby, who we heard about a moment ago, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross.
[00:04:40] Though, of course, the story of the Cambridge Five really begins at Cambridge University, we should start first with a bit of background on these men.
[00:04:49] This is important because the types of people the Cambridge Five were, and by that I mean their class backgrounds, their social status and the circles they moved in, these were crucial to their spywork.
[00:05:03] Now, what you need to understand about the Cambridge Five is that they all - besides one - came from incredibly privileged backgrounds.
[00:05:11] They were all born into Britain’s upper-middle or upper-class, were educated at the top private schools, and came from ‘good’, wealthy, families with connections.
[00:05:23] To give you an idea of quite how high up these men were in British society, Donald Maclean was the son of Sir Donald Maclean, a powerful Liberal Party politician who was a Privy Councillor, like an advisor, to the Royal Family.
[00:05:38] Harold Adrian Russell Philby, known as ‘Kim’, the man from the London park a couple of minutes ago, he was educated at one of Britain’s most exclusive private schools, Westminster, and he was the son of a famous Arab scholar and diplomat who advised the King of Saudi Arabia.
[00:05:57] Guy Burgess, whose full name was Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess, went to school at the prestigious Eton College, the school that has produced a third of Britain’s Prime Ministers, including Boris Johnson, and is where Princes William and Harry went.
[00:06:13] Anthony Blunt was a distant cousin of the Queen Mother and fourth cousin of Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. He also had a suitably prestigious education, going to Marlborough College, another elite private school.
[00:06:29] John Cairncross, on the other hand, was a little different from the other four of the Cambridge Five.
[00:06:35] He was Scottish, first of all, and came not from the same privileged background as the others but from working-class roots. He was born in Glasgow in 1913, the son of an ironmonger and a primary school teacher, but when he won a place at Cambridge University, he was thrust into the very top of British society.
[00:06:57] And Cambridge University, in the early-1930s, is where our story really begins.
[00:07:04] As you may know, or may remember from episode number 276, Cambridge University is not just one of the most prestigious universities in Britain, but it’s consistently ranked as one of the best in the world.
[00:07:19] Cambridge is a lot more meritocratic now, but in the 1930s going to study at Cambridge or Oxford was a rite of passage for wealthy and privileged young British men. It was the expected step for young men like Burgess, Philby, Maclean and Blunt.
[00:07:37] Three or four years at Cambridge, then a respectable job in government or the army or the business world.
[00:07:45] Kim Philby arrived to study History and Economics; Maclean studied modern languages; Burgess, history; Blunt, who was the oldest of the group, studied mathematics; and Cairncross, studied French and German.
[00:07:59] All five men were academically gifted, that's to say, intelligent, but their interests extended outside the library.
[00:08:09] Moving in the same circles - meaning, the same social groups - the five met and became friends, and were all known to be very sociable and active in Cambridge’s exclusive social scene.
[00:08:21] Burgess in particular, it was said, bragged, or claimed of “knowing everybody who was anybody, everywhere and anywhere.”
[00:08:31] In fact, as we will see, socialising and alcohol - and some of the men’s struggles to control their alcohol intake - this was a common theme throughout their careers and it was partly to blame for their eventual downfall.
[00:08:46] Some of the Five were also active in Cambridge’s ultra-elite secret societies.
[00:08:52] Burgess and Blunt were both members of the Cambridge Apostles and Pitt Club, two private members clubs for Cambridge’s ‘cream of the crop’ - that's to say, the best of the best - that have had kings, politicians and famous academics as former members.
[00:09:08] Outside this bubble of Cambridge, as you will know, the 1930s was a time of great economic upheaval and class tension.
[00:09:19] The First World War had ended in 1918, at the end of the 1920s the Great Depression had caused huge hardship and suffering, and with it came extreme political turbulence.
[00:09:31] And specifically, the threat of fascism across Europe.
[00:09:37] For these young men and women at Cambridge, men and women who felt they were destined to go on to rule not only the country, but large parts of the world, the question remained: what sort of world do we want to live in, what sort of country do we want to rule?
[00:09:54] It seemed like there were two competing visions of the world: on the one side, there was fascism, Mussolini, Hitler, and Oswald Molsley in the UK, and on the other, the teachings of Karl Marx, communism.
[00:10:10] For many who feared the rise of fascism, there was only one logical choice: support the communists.
[00:10:18] And all five of these young men you just heard about, Maclean, Burgess, Philby, Blunt and Cairncross, they all held what would be considered very left-wing views and moved in circles, or interacted with, groups with links to the British Communist Party.
[00:10:35] Well, as you might imagine, the Soviets were hoping to find and win over exactly these types of young, ideological and impressionable men.
[00:10:46] And it’s here that we need to meet our friend Otto, the man with the Eastern European accent from the start of the episode.
[00:10:54] Or rather, not Otto, but Arnold Deutsch.
[00:10:58] In early-1934, Deutsch had been sent by Soviet intelligence to London.
[00:11:04] Deutsch's cousin was Oscar Deutsch, the man who created the Odeon cinema chain, which still exists today by the way, and is actually the largest cinema chain in the country. Crucially, the respectable Oscar Deutsch supported his cousin’s move to the UK, meaning he was able to exist, to do his spywork, under the radar, without the knowledge of the British authorities.
[00:11:31] Deutsch’s postgraduate work at the University of London was a cover, of course, and he was secretly working as a recruiter with instructions from Moscow to, and I’m quoting directly ‘cultivate young radical high-fliers from leading British universities before they entered the corridors of power.’
[00:11:51] This mission brought him to that bench in London’s Regent’s Park, and resulted in the recruitment of Kim Philby, the first of the Cambridge Five, in the summer of 1934.
[00:12:03] Philby later said that Deutsch “spoke at great length, arguing that a person with my family background and possibilities could do far more for Communism than the run-of-the-mill Party member or sympathiser... I accepted. His first instructions were… that I should break off as quickly as possible all personal contact with our Communist friends."
[00:12:27] This was, of course, to make it appear as though he was no longer a communist sympathiser and strengthen his cover - his fake identity.
[00:12:36] His first mission was to spy on his own father, the diplomat, as the Soviets believed he could have had important documents in his office.
[00:12:47] From there, Philby recommended Burgess and Maclean, then Burgess recruited Blunt, and a little while later Burgess and Blunt convinced Cairncross to join them.
[00:12:58] The pitch, or the offer, was framed in a way to not be explicitly working for the Soviets, but rather, against fascism and for peace.
[00:13:08] Indeed, it wasn’t pitched as them spying against Britain, but rather they were providing information that would help stop Britain falling to fascism. Well, this was the case in the 1930s, but as we will discover, it soon became something altogether very different.
[00:13:27] By the time the Five began to graduate from Cambridge in the mid to late-1930s, at least three, Philby, Maclean and Burgess, and possibly more, had been recruited and trained by the NKVD, the Soviet intelligence wing that would go on to be the famous KGB.
[00:13:46] The exact timing and sequence of their recruitment is a little murky, or unclear, not only because they were spies and it was all top secret, obviously, but also because some of the Five, notably Blunt, have cast doubt on the fact that they were all recruited while they were students at Cambridge.
[00:14:05] The exact timings aren’t crucial for our story.
[00:14:08] Whether it was at university or shortly after, they were all recruited, they were full-blown Soviet spies, with their own cryptonyms, that is, their own secret spy names or codes.
[00:14:21] Maclean was known as Homer, Burgess as Hicks, Philby was Sonny or Stanley, Blunt was Johnson, and Cairncross went by Liszt.
[00:14:34] And these Soviet spies-in-waiting all went on to secure the kind of jobs that were beyond the Soviet’s wildest dreams.
[00:14:43] So, what did they do?
[00:14:45] That's to say, what were their official jobs - their ‘covers’?
[00:14:49] Maclean and Cairncross joined the Foreign Office, becoming diplomats, essentially.
[00:14:54] Guy Burgess initially worked for a Conservative MP, a member of parliament, before moving on to the BBC, where he spent time interacting with and interviewing politicians and other influential figures from the British establishment.
[00:15:09] Blunt joined the army and then moved onto MI5, the domestic counterintelligence agency, essentially, the internal spy department of the UK.
[00:15:20] Kim Philby, however, was given a slightly more interesting first mission, one I think is worth considering for a moment and that might be particularly interesting for the Spanish listeners among you.
[00:15:33] According to top secret MI5 files that were made public in 2011, Philby was sent to Spain.
[00:15:41] He arrived in February of 1937, shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Officially, he was there as a journalist, covering the war for The Times newspaper.
[00:15:54] The Times is a more right-wing publication and was sympathetic to the nationalists, that is, Franco’s fascist army, not the Republicans.
[00:16:04] Why is this relevant, you might be thinking, and surely, if he was a spy for the Soviets this seems like an odd choice.
[00:16:13] It was all a cover, of course.
[00:16:16] For the duration of his time in Spain, Philby was stationed with, he was based with, nationalist forces, supposedly reporting for the British newspaper.
[00:16:26] But his real mission was to ‘keep an eye’ on troops, particularly the Italians and Germans, and pass this information back to the Soviets, who were, of course, supporting the Republican cause.
[00:16:39] Some historians believe that his real mission, however, was something altogether more exciting, and had he pulled it off, would have had a tumultuous impact on Spanish history.
[00:16:52] And this was, according to a Soviet officer who defected to the West, to assassinate Franco, the Spanish dictator.
[00:17:01] Now, this does seem slightly far-fetched, slightly unlikely, as Philby had no military training or experience.
[00:17:10] And just in case you need a reminder, Franco wasn’t assassinated, and he ruled Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975.
[00:17:19] It is incredible to think that the young Philby would have been given such a mission so early on in his spying career, but as we will see throughout this mini-series, the story of the Cambridge Five is filled with strange coincidences and lucky escapes.
[00:17:36] Take for example the time when Franco’s guards searched Philby but didn’t find the piece of paper he had written his secret codes down on - codes for communicating and sending secret messages.
[00:17:49] Philby then got lucky again in December of 1937 when he was the sole survivor after a bomb landed in front of his car.
[00:17:58] The other passengers, all foreign journalists too, were killed, and the nationalist soldiers used Philby as a propaganda tool.
[00:18:07] Incredibly, he was even given the Red Cross of Military Merit by Franco.
[00:18:13] Now by the time the Second World War had started in 1939, all of the Cambridge Five had done exactly as their Soviet handlers had hoped for.
[00:18:23] They had established themselves and started careers in key branches of the British political and intelligence establishment.
[00:18:31] Some of them were in the Foreign Office, or interacting with influential people in the BBC and British Army.
[00:18:38] As war in Europe began, the Cambridge spy ring were also approached by British intelligence, who thought that their education, experiences and contacts would make them excellent candidates to be spies.
[00:18:51] British spies, that is.
[00:18:54] Philby was recruited into MI6, and some of the others were interviewed or worked informally for British intelligence.
[00:19:03] Crucially, owing to their privileged backgrounds and respected families, very little [if any] security checks were done on the men.
[00:19:13] They were, simply put, assumed to be ‘good chaps’ because of who they were - they had come from good families, gone to the right schools, gone to Cambridge, they behaved like a British gentleman should behave.
[00:19:26] They were perfectly positioned for Act Two, what would turn out to be the most prolific and treacherous spy ring in British history.
[00:19:38] Ok then, that’s it for part one on this mini-series on the Cambridge Five, part one of this wonderful story.
[00:19:44] Next up we’ll get into the real ins and outs of what they did, how they did it, and how their personal vices got in the way, or perhaps even helped them, in their quest to betray their country.
[00:19:57] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:20:02] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are talking about a group of Soviet spies.
[00:00:26] But they weren’t your average Soviets spies; they were members of Britain’s ruling elite.
[00:00:33] Highly educated, upper-class men thought to be the best and brightest of British society. Men who, to the outside world, were at the very top of the British establishment, but behind closed doors, they fed information to an ideological enemy for a period spanning three decades.
[00:00:53] As this is such an incredible story, with so many weird and wonderful facts, twists, turns, stories and personalities, this is going to be a three part mini-series on the group dubbed “the Cambridge Five”.
[00:01:07] Today, in episode one, we will take a look at the backgrounds and recruitment of these men, of these spies, with a little historical context to help us properly appreciate the magnitude of what they did.
[00:01:20] In part-two, we’ll look at their actual spywork, the ingenious ways they did it, and, of course, the top secret information they stole.
[00:01:29] And in part-three, we’ll get into their downfall, how their story ended, and how, in some respects, they got away with it.
[00:01:37] OK then, let’s get into it and talk about the Cambridge Five - the Soviet spy ring hidden in plain sight.
[00:01:48] It was a July afternoon in London’s Regents Park, in 1934.
[00:01:54] It was a clear, hot day, and the sun was high in the sky.
[00:01:59] Birds chirped, and children played.
[00:02:03] Park benches lined the paths, and Londoners lounged lazily in the shade.
[00:02:10] A 22-year-old man named Kim Philby, looking rather nervous, made his way through the park wearing a shirt and tie, despite the sticky summer heat.
[00:02:21] He hadn’t planned to come to the park that day, but set off after his wife had told him, rather mysteriously, that she had arranged for him to meet, and I’m quoting directly, ‘a man of decisive importance’.
[00:02:36] She told him nothing more, only the time and location.
[00:02:41] Not knowing what to expect, he sat down on a bench and tried to blend in.
[00:02:48] After a few minutes he saw a stocky, short man approaching.
[00:02:53] He introduced himself as ‘Otto’, and spoke with a strong eastern European accent.
[00:03:01] Looking around, Otto made small talk and complained that he hated London.
[00:03:06] He much preferred Paris, he said.
[00:03:09] It wasn’t long before Otto cut to the chase, he stopped with the small talk and revealed the true purpose of the meeting.
[00:03:18] Otto turned and said that someone like Philby, someone from his family background, could be of great use. He could make a much greater impact than a mere ‘run-of-the-mill party member’.
[00:03:33] Philby nodded, saying nothing.
[00:03:36] “You must stop communicating with all the friends I tell you to if you want to go ahead with this”, Otto said.
[00:03:43] Eventually the men came to an agreement, and a few moments later Otto left in one direction, Philby the other, and the two men slipped back into the anonymous hustle and bustle of central London.
[00:03:58] Officially, Otto was working at a nearby university; unofficially, he was Arnold Deutsch, a spy recruiter for the Soviets.
[00:04:09] Deutsch had just recruited Kim Philby: the most famous British double-agent of all time, the biggest traitor, some say, in British history.
[00:04:21] That afternoon in Regent’s Park was the first step in the story of the Cambridge Five.
[00:04:27] So, who were the Cambridge Five?
[00:04:30] They are Kim Philby, who we heard about a moment ago, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross.
[00:04:40] Though, of course, the story of the Cambridge Five really begins at Cambridge University, we should start first with a bit of background on these men.
[00:04:49] This is important because the types of people the Cambridge Five were, and by that I mean their class backgrounds, their social status and the circles they moved in, these were crucial to their spywork.
[00:05:03] Now, what you need to understand about the Cambridge Five is that they all - besides one - came from incredibly privileged backgrounds.
[00:05:11] They were all born into Britain’s upper-middle or upper-class, were educated at the top private schools, and came from ‘good’, wealthy, families with connections.
[00:05:23] To give you an idea of quite how high up these men were in British society, Donald Maclean was the son of Sir Donald Maclean, a powerful Liberal Party politician who was a Privy Councillor, like an advisor, to the Royal Family.
[00:05:38] Harold Adrian Russell Philby, known as ‘Kim’, the man from the London park a couple of minutes ago, he was educated at one of Britain’s most exclusive private schools, Westminster, and he was the son of a famous Arab scholar and diplomat who advised the King of Saudi Arabia.
[00:05:57] Guy Burgess, whose full name was Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess, went to school at the prestigious Eton College, the school that has produced a third of Britain’s Prime Ministers, including Boris Johnson, and is where Princes William and Harry went.
[00:06:13] Anthony Blunt was a distant cousin of the Queen Mother and fourth cousin of Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. He also had a suitably prestigious education, going to Marlborough College, another elite private school.
[00:06:29] John Cairncross, on the other hand, was a little different from the other four of the Cambridge Five.
[00:06:35] He was Scottish, first of all, and came not from the same privileged background as the others but from working-class roots. He was born in Glasgow in 1913, the son of an ironmonger and a primary school teacher, but when he won a place at Cambridge University, he was thrust into the very top of British society.
[00:06:57] And Cambridge University, in the early-1930s, is where our story really begins.
[00:07:04] As you may know, or may remember from episode number 276, Cambridge University is not just one of the most prestigious universities in Britain, but it’s consistently ranked as one of the best in the world.
[00:07:19] Cambridge is a lot more meritocratic now, but in the 1930s going to study at Cambridge or Oxford was a rite of passage for wealthy and privileged young British men. It was the expected step for young men like Burgess, Philby, Maclean and Blunt.
[00:07:37] Three or four years at Cambridge, then a respectable job in government or the army or the business world.
[00:07:45] Kim Philby arrived to study History and Economics; Maclean studied modern languages; Burgess, history; Blunt, who was the oldest of the group, studied mathematics; and Cairncross, studied French and German.
[00:07:59] All five men were academically gifted, that's to say, intelligent, but their interests extended outside the library.
[00:08:09] Moving in the same circles - meaning, the same social groups - the five met and became friends, and were all known to be very sociable and active in Cambridge’s exclusive social scene.
[00:08:21] Burgess in particular, it was said, bragged, or claimed of “knowing everybody who was anybody, everywhere and anywhere.”
[00:08:31] In fact, as we will see, socialising and alcohol - and some of the men’s struggles to control their alcohol intake - this was a common theme throughout their careers and it was partly to blame for their eventual downfall.
[00:08:46] Some of the Five were also active in Cambridge’s ultra-elite secret societies.
[00:08:52] Burgess and Blunt were both members of the Cambridge Apostles and Pitt Club, two private members clubs for Cambridge’s ‘cream of the crop’ - that's to say, the best of the best - that have had kings, politicians and famous academics as former members.
[00:09:08] Outside this bubble of Cambridge, as you will know, the 1930s was a time of great economic upheaval and class tension.
[00:09:19] The First World War had ended in 1918, at the end of the 1920s the Great Depression had caused huge hardship and suffering, and with it came extreme political turbulence.
[00:09:31] And specifically, the threat of fascism across Europe.
[00:09:37] For these young men and women at Cambridge, men and women who felt they were destined to go on to rule not only the country, but large parts of the world, the question remained: what sort of world do we want to live in, what sort of country do we want to rule?
[00:09:54] It seemed like there were two competing visions of the world: on the one side, there was fascism, Mussolini, Hitler, and Oswald Molsley in the UK, and on the other, the teachings of Karl Marx, communism.
[00:10:10] For many who feared the rise of fascism, there was only one logical choice: support the communists.
[00:10:18] And all five of these young men you just heard about, Maclean, Burgess, Philby, Blunt and Cairncross, they all held what would be considered very left-wing views and moved in circles, or interacted with, groups with links to the British Communist Party.
[00:10:35] Well, as you might imagine, the Soviets were hoping to find and win over exactly these types of young, ideological and impressionable men.
[00:10:46] And it’s here that we need to meet our friend Otto, the man with the Eastern European accent from the start of the episode.
[00:10:54] Or rather, not Otto, but Arnold Deutsch.
[00:10:58] In early-1934, Deutsch had been sent by Soviet intelligence to London.
[00:11:04] Deutsch's cousin was Oscar Deutsch, the man who created the Odeon cinema chain, which still exists today by the way, and is actually the largest cinema chain in the country. Crucially, the respectable Oscar Deutsch supported his cousin’s move to the UK, meaning he was able to exist, to do his spywork, under the radar, without the knowledge of the British authorities.
[00:11:31] Deutsch’s postgraduate work at the University of London was a cover, of course, and he was secretly working as a recruiter with instructions from Moscow to, and I’m quoting directly ‘cultivate young radical high-fliers from leading British universities before they entered the corridors of power.’
[00:11:51] This mission brought him to that bench in London’s Regent’s Park, and resulted in the recruitment of Kim Philby, the first of the Cambridge Five, in the summer of 1934.
[00:12:03] Philby later said that Deutsch “spoke at great length, arguing that a person with my family background and possibilities could do far more for Communism than the run-of-the-mill Party member or sympathiser... I accepted. His first instructions were… that I should break off as quickly as possible all personal contact with our Communist friends."
[00:12:27] This was, of course, to make it appear as though he was no longer a communist sympathiser and strengthen his cover - his fake identity.
[00:12:36] His first mission was to spy on his own father, the diplomat, as the Soviets believed he could have had important documents in his office.
[00:12:47] From there, Philby recommended Burgess and Maclean, then Burgess recruited Blunt, and a little while later Burgess and Blunt convinced Cairncross to join them.
[00:12:58] The pitch, or the offer, was framed in a way to not be explicitly working for the Soviets, but rather, against fascism and for peace.
[00:13:08] Indeed, it wasn’t pitched as them spying against Britain, but rather they were providing information that would help stop Britain falling to fascism. Well, this was the case in the 1930s, but as we will discover, it soon became something altogether very different.
[00:13:27] By the time the Five began to graduate from Cambridge in the mid to late-1930s, at least three, Philby, Maclean and Burgess, and possibly more, had been recruited and trained by the NKVD, the Soviet intelligence wing that would go on to be the famous KGB.
[00:13:46] The exact timing and sequence of their recruitment is a little murky, or unclear, not only because they were spies and it was all top secret, obviously, but also because some of the Five, notably Blunt, have cast doubt on the fact that they were all recruited while they were students at Cambridge.
[00:14:05] The exact timings aren’t crucial for our story.
[00:14:08] Whether it was at university or shortly after, they were all recruited, they were full-blown Soviet spies, with their own cryptonyms, that is, their own secret spy names or codes.
[00:14:21] Maclean was known as Homer, Burgess as Hicks, Philby was Sonny or Stanley, Blunt was Johnson, and Cairncross went by Liszt.
[00:14:34] And these Soviet spies-in-waiting all went on to secure the kind of jobs that were beyond the Soviet’s wildest dreams.
[00:14:43] So, what did they do?
[00:14:45] That's to say, what were their official jobs - their ‘covers’?
[00:14:49] Maclean and Cairncross joined the Foreign Office, becoming diplomats, essentially.
[00:14:54] Guy Burgess initially worked for a Conservative MP, a member of parliament, before moving on to the BBC, where he spent time interacting with and interviewing politicians and other influential figures from the British establishment.
[00:15:09] Blunt joined the army and then moved onto MI5, the domestic counterintelligence agency, essentially, the internal spy department of the UK.
[00:15:20] Kim Philby, however, was given a slightly more interesting first mission, one I think is worth considering for a moment and that might be particularly interesting for the Spanish listeners among you.
[00:15:33] According to top secret MI5 files that were made public in 2011, Philby was sent to Spain.
[00:15:41] He arrived in February of 1937, shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Officially, he was there as a journalist, covering the war for The Times newspaper.
[00:15:54] The Times is a more right-wing publication and was sympathetic to the nationalists, that is, Franco’s fascist army, not the Republicans.
[00:16:04] Why is this relevant, you might be thinking, and surely, if he was a spy for the Soviets this seems like an odd choice.
[00:16:13] It was all a cover, of course.
[00:16:16] For the duration of his time in Spain, Philby was stationed with, he was based with, nationalist forces, supposedly reporting for the British newspaper.
[00:16:26] But his real mission was to ‘keep an eye’ on troops, particularly the Italians and Germans, and pass this information back to the Soviets, who were, of course, supporting the Republican cause.
[00:16:39] Some historians believe that his real mission, however, was something altogether more exciting, and had he pulled it off, would have had a tumultuous impact on Spanish history.
[00:16:52] And this was, according to a Soviet officer who defected to the West, to assassinate Franco, the Spanish dictator.
[00:17:01] Now, this does seem slightly far-fetched, slightly unlikely, as Philby had no military training or experience.
[00:17:10] And just in case you need a reminder, Franco wasn’t assassinated, and he ruled Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975.
[00:17:19] It is incredible to think that the young Philby would have been given such a mission so early on in his spying career, but as we will see throughout this mini-series, the story of the Cambridge Five is filled with strange coincidences and lucky escapes.
[00:17:36] Take for example the time when Franco’s guards searched Philby but didn’t find the piece of paper he had written his secret codes down on - codes for communicating and sending secret messages.
[00:17:49] Philby then got lucky again in December of 1937 when he was the sole survivor after a bomb landed in front of his car.
[00:17:58] The other passengers, all foreign journalists too, were killed, and the nationalist soldiers used Philby as a propaganda tool.
[00:18:07] Incredibly, he was even given the Red Cross of Military Merit by Franco.
[00:18:13] Now by the time the Second World War had started in 1939, all of the Cambridge Five had done exactly as their Soviet handlers had hoped for.
[00:18:23] They had established themselves and started careers in key branches of the British political and intelligence establishment.
[00:18:31] Some of them were in the Foreign Office, or interacting with influential people in the BBC and British Army.
[00:18:38] As war in Europe began, the Cambridge spy ring were also approached by British intelligence, who thought that their education, experiences and contacts would make them excellent candidates to be spies.
[00:18:51] British spies, that is.
[00:18:54] Philby was recruited into MI6, and some of the others were interviewed or worked informally for British intelligence.
[00:19:03] Crucially, owing to their privileged backgrounds and respected families, very little [if any] security checks were done on the men.
[00:19:13] They were, simply put, assumed to be ‘good chaps’ because of who they were - they had come from good families, gone to the right schools, gone to Cambridge, they behaved like a British gentleman should behave.
[00:19:26] They were perfectly positioned for Act Two, what would turn out to be the most prolific and treacherous spy ring in British history.
[00:19:38] Ok then, that’s it for part one on this mini-series on the Cambridge Five, part one of this wonderful story.
[00:19:44] Next up we’ll get into the real ins and outs of what they did, how they did it, and how their personal vices got in the way, or perhaps even helped them, in their quest to betray their country.
[00:19:57] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:20:02] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are talking about a group of Soviet spies.
[00:00:26] But they weren’t your average Soviets spies; they were members of Britain’s ruling elite.
[00:00:33] Highly educated, upper-class men thought to be the best and brightest of British society. Men who, to the outside world, were at the very top of the British establishment, but behind closed doors, they fed information to an ideological enemy for a period spanning three decades.
[00:00:53] As this is such an incredible story, with so many weird and wonderful facts, twists, turns, stories and personalities, this is going to be a three part mini-series on the group dubbed “the Cambridge Five”.
[00:01:07] Today, in episode one, we will take a look at the backgrounds and recruitment of these men, of these spies, with a little historical context to help us properly appreciate the magnitude of what they did.
[00:01:20] In part-two, we’ll look at their actual spywork, the ingenious ways they did it, and, of course, the top secret information they stole.
[00:01:29] And in part-three, we’ll get into their downfall, how their story ended, and how, in some respects, they got away with it.
[00:01:37] OK then, let’s get into it and talk about the Cambridge Five - the Soviet spy ring hidden in plain sight.
[00:01:48] It was a July afternoon in London’s Regents Park, in 1934.
[00:01:54] It was a clear, hot day, and the sun was high in the sky.
[00:01:59] Birds chirped, and children played.
[00:02:03] Park benches lined the paths, and Londoners lounged lazily in the shade.
[00:02:10] A 22-year-old man named Kim Philby, looking rather nervous, made his way through the park wearing a shirt and tie, despite the sticky summer heat.
[00:02:21] He hadn’t planned to come to the park that day, but set off after his wife had told him, rather mysteriously, that she had arranged for him to meet, and I’m quoting directly, ‘a man of decisive importance’.
[00:02:36] She told him nothing more, only the time and location.
[00:02:41] Not knowing what to expect, he sat down on a bench and tried to blend in.
[00:02:48] After a few minutes he saw a stocky, short man approaching.
[00:02:53] He introduced himself as ‘Otto’, and spoke with a strong eastern European accent.
[00:03:01] Looking around, Otto made small talk and complained that he hated London.
[00:03:06] He much preferred Paris, he said.
[00:03:09] It wasn’t long before Otto cut to the chase, he stopped with the small talk and revealed the true purpose of the meeting.
[00:03:18] Otto turned and said that someone like Philby, someone from his family background, could be of great use. He could make a much greater impact than a mere ‘run-of-the-mill party member’.
[00:03:33] Philby nodded, saying nothing.
[00:03:36] “You must stop communicating with all the friends I tell you to if you want to go ahead with this”, Otto said.
[00:03:43] Eventually the men came to an agreement, and a few moments later Otto left in one direction, Philby the other, and the two men slipped back into the anonymous hustle and bustle of central London.
[00:03:58] Officially, Otto was working at a nearby university; unofficially, he was Arnold Deutsch, a spy recruiter for the Soviets.
[00:04:09] Deutsch had just recruited Kim Philby: the most famous British double-agent of all time, the biggest traitor, some say, in British history.
[00:04:21] That afternoon in Regent’s Park was the first step in the story of the Cambridge Five.
[00:04:27] So, who were the Cambridge Five?
[00:04:30] They are Kim Philby, who we heard about a moment ago, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross.
[00:04:40] Though, of course, the story of the Cambridge Five really begins at Cambridge University, we should start first with a bit of background on these men.
[00:04:49] This is important because the types of people the Cambridge Five were, and by that I mean their class backgrounds, their social status and the circles they moved in, these were crucial to their spywork.
[00:05:03] Now, what you need to understand about the Cambridge Five is that they all - besides one - came from incredibly privileged backgrounds.
[00:05:11] They were all born into Britain’s upper-middle or upper-class, were educated at the top private schools, and came from ‘good’, wealthy, families with connections.
[00:05:23] To give you an idea of quite how high up these men were in British society, Donald Maclean was the son of Sir Donald Maclean, a powerful Liberal Party politician who was a Privy Councillor, like an advisor, to the Royal Family.
[00:05:38] Harold Adrian Russell Philby, known as ‘Kim’, the man from the London park a couple of minutes ago, he was educated at one of Britain’s most exclusive private schools, Westminster, and he was the son of a famous Arab scholar and diplomat who advised the King of Saudi Arabia.
[00:05:57] Guy Burgess, whose full name was Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess, went to school at the prestigious Eton College, the school that has produced a third of Britain’s Prime Ministers, including Boris Johnson, and is where Princes William and Harry went.
[00:06:13] Anthony Blunt was a distant cousin of the Queen Mother and fourth cousin of Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. He also had a suitably prestigious education, going to Marlborough College, another elite private school.
[00:06:29] John Cairncross, on the other hand, was a little different from the other four of the Cambridge Five.
[00:06:35] He was Scottish, first of all, and came not from the same privileged background as the others but from working-class roots. He was born in Glasgow in 1913, the son of an ironmonger and a primary school teacher, but when he won a place at Cambridge University, he was thrust into the very top of British society.
[00:06:57] And Cambridge University, in the early-1930s, is where our story really begins.
[00:07:04] As you may know, or may remember from episode number 276, Cambridge University is not just one of the most prestigious universities in Britain, but it’s consistently ranked as one of the best in the world.
[00:07:19] Cambridge is a lot more meritocratic now, but in the 1930s going to study at Cambridge or Oxford was a rite of passage for wealthy and privileged young British men. It was the expected step for young men like Burgess, Philby, Maclean and Blunt.
[00:07:37] Three or four years at Cambridge, then a respectable job in government or the army or the business world.
[00:07:45] Kim Philby arrived to study History and Economics; Maclean studied modern languages; Burgess, history; Blunt, who was the oldest of the group, studied mathematics; and Cairncross, studied French and German.
[00:07:59] All five men were academically gifted, that's to say, intelligent, but their interests extended outside the library.
[00:08:09] Moving in the same circles - meaning, the same social groups - the five met and became friends, and were all known to be very sociable and active in Cambridge’s exclusive social scene.
[00:08:21] Burgess in particular, it was said, bragged, or claimed of “knowing everybody who was anybody, everywhere and anywhere.”
[00:08:31] In fact, as we will see, socialising and alcohol - and some of the men’s struggles to control their alcohol intake - this was a common theme throughout their careers and it was partly to blame for their eventual downfall.
[00:08:46] Some of the Five were also active in Cambridge’s ultra-elite secret societies.
[00:08:52] Burgess and Blunt were both members of the Cambridge Apostles and Pitt Club, two private members clubs for Cambridge’s ‘cream of the crop’ - that's to say, the best of the best - that have had kings, politicians and famous academics as former members.
[00:09:08] Outside this bubble of Cambridge, as you will know, the 1930s was a time of great economic upheaval and class tension.
[00:09:19] The First World War had ended in 1918, at the end of the 1920s the Great Depression had caused huge hardship and suffering, and with it came extreme political turbulence.
[00:09:31] And specifically, the threat of fascism across Europe.
[00:09:37] For these young men and women at Cambridge, men and women who felt they were destined to go on to rule not only the country, but large parts of the world, the question remained: what sort of world do we want to live in, what sort of country do we want to rule?
[00:09:54] It seemed like there were two competing visions of the world: on the one side, there was fascism, Mussolini, Hitler, and Oswald Molsley in the UK, and on the other, the teachings of Karl Marx, communism.
[00:10:10] For many who feared the rise of fascism, there was only one logical choice: support the communists.
[00:10:18] And all five of these young men you just heard about, Maclean, Burgess, Philby, Blunt and Cairncross, they all held what would be considered very left-wing views and moved in circles, or interacted with, groups with links to the British Communist Party.
[00:10:35] Well, as you might imagine, the Soviets were hoping to find and win over exactly these types of young, ideological and impressionable men.
[00:10:46] And it’s here that we need to meet our friend Otto, the man with the Eastern European accent from the start of the episode.
[00:10:54] Or rather, not Otto, but Arnold Deutsch.
[00:10:58] In early-1934, Deutsch had been sent by Soviet intelligence to London.
[00:11:04] Deutsch's cousin was Oscar Deutsch, the man who created the Odeon cinema chain, which still exists today by the way, and is actually the largest cinema chain in the country. Crucially, the respectable Oscar Deutsch supported his cousin’s move to the UK, meaning he was able to exist, to do his spywork, under the radar, without the knowledge of the British authorities.
[00:11:31] Deutsch’s postgraduate work at the University of London was a cover, of course, and he was secretly working as a recruiter with instructions from Moscow to, and I’m quoting directly ‘cultivate young radical high-fliers from leading British universities before they entered the corridors of power.’
[00:11:51] This mission brought him to that bench in London’s Regent’s Park, and resulted in the recruitment of Kim Philby, the first of the Cambridge Five, in the summer of 1934.
[00:12:03] Philby later said that Deutsch “spoke at great length, arguing that a person with my family background and possibilities could do far more for Communism than the run-of-the-mill Party member or sympathiser... I accepted. His first instructions were… that I should break off as quickly as possible all personal contact with our Communist friends."
[00:12:27] This was, of course, to make it appear as though he was no longer a communist sympathiser and strengthen his cover - his fake identity.
[00:12:36] His first mission was to spy on his own father, the diplomat, as the Soviets believed he could have had important documents in his office.
[00:12:47] From there, Philby recommended Burgess and Maclean, then Burgess recruited Blunt, and a little while later Burgess and Blunt convinced Cairncross to join them.
[00:12:58] The pitch, or the offer, was framed in a way to not be explicitly working for the Soviets, but rather, against fascism and for peace.
[00:13:08] Indeed, it wasn’t pitched as them spying against Britain, but rather they were providing information that would help stop Britain falling to fascism. Well, this was the case in the 1930s, but as we will discover, it soon became something altogether very different.
[00:13:27] By the time the Five began to graduate from Cambridge in the mid to late-1930s, at least three, Philby, Maclean and Burgess, and possibly more, had been recruited and trained by the NKVD, the Soviet intelligence wing that would go on to be the famous KGB.
[00:13:46] The exact timing and sequence of their recruitment is a little murky, or unclear, not only because they were spies and it was all top secret, obviously, but also because some of the Five, notably Blunt, have cast doubt on the fact that they were all recruited while they were students at Cambridge.
[00:14:05] The exact timings aren’t crucial for our story.
[00:14:08] Whether it was at university or shortly after, they were all recruited, they were full-blown Soviet spies, with their own cryptonyms, that is, their own secret spy names or codes.
[00:14:21] Maclean was known as Homer, Burgess as Hicks, Philby was Sonny or Stanley, Blunt was Johnson, and Cairncross went by Liszt.
[00:14:34] And these Soviet spies-in-waiting all went on to secure the kind of jobs that were beyond the Soviet’s wildest dreams.
[00:14:43] So, what did they do?
[00:14:45] That's to say, what were their official jobs - their ‘covers’?
[00:14:49] Maclean and Cairncross joined the Foreign Office, becoming diplomats, essentially.
[00:14:54] Guy Burgess initially worked for a Conservative MP, a member of parliament, before moving on to the BBC, where he spent time interacting with and interviewing politicians and other influential figures from the British establishment.
[00:15:09] Blunt joined the army and then moved onto MI5, the domestic counterintelligence agency, essentially, the internal spy department of the UK.
[00:15:20] Kim Philby, however, was given a slightly more interesting first mission, one I think is worth considering for a moment and that might be particularly interesting for the Spanish listeners among you.
[00:15:33] According to top secret MI5 files that were made public in 2011, Philby was sent to Spain.
[00:15:41] He arrived in February of 1937, shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Officially, he was there as a journalist, covering the war for The Times newspaper.
[00:15:54] The Times is a more right-wing publication and was sympathetic to the nationalists, that is, Franco’s fascist army, not the Republicans.
[00:16:04] Why is this relevant, you might be thinking, and surely, if he was a spy for the Soviets this seems like an odd choice.
[00:16:13] It was all a cover, of course.
[00:16:16] For the duration of his time in Spain, Philby was stationed with, he was based with, nationalist forces, supposedly reporting for the British newspaper.
[00:16:26] But his real mission was to ‘keep an eye’ on troops, particularly the Italians and Germans, and pass this information back to the Soviets, who were, of course, supporting the Republican cause.
[00:16:39] Some historians believe that his real mission, however, was something altogether more exciting, and had he pulled it off, would have had a tumultuous impact on Spanish history.
[00:16:52] And this was, according to a Soviet officer who defected to the West, to assassinate Franco, the Spanish dictator.
[00:17:01] Now, this does seem slightly far-fetched, slightly unlikely, as Philby had no military training or experience.
[00:17:10] And just in case you need a reminder, Franco wasn’t assassinated, and he ruled Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975.
[00:17:19] It is incredible to think that the young Philby would have been given such a mission so early on in his spying career, but as we will see throughout this mini-series, the story of the Cambridge Five is filled with strange coincidences and lucky escapes.
[00:17:36] Take for example the time when Franco’s guards searched Philby but didn’t find the piece of paper he had written his secret codes down on - codes for communicating and sending secret messages.
[00:17:49] Philby then got lucky again in December of 1937 when he was the sole survivor after a bomb landed in front of his car.
[00:17:58] The other passengers, all foreign journalists too, were killed, and the nationalist soldiers used Philby as a propaganda tool.
[00:18:07] Incredibly, he was even given the Red Cross of Military Merit by Franco.
[00:18:13] Now by the time the Second World War had started in 1939, all of the Cambridge Five had done exactly as their Soviet handlers had hoped for.
[00:18:23] They had established themselves and started careers in key branches of the British political and intelligence establishment.
[00:18:31] Some of them were in the Foreign Office, or interacting with influential people in the BBC and British Army.
[00:18:38] As war in Europe began, the Cambridge spy ring were also approached by British intelligence, who thought that their education, experiences and contacts would make them excellent candidates to be spies.
[00:18:51] British spies, that is.
[00:18:54] Philby was recruited into MI6, and some of the others were interviewed or worked informally for British intelligence.
[00:19:03] Crucially, owing to their privileged backgrounds and respected families, very little [if any] security checks were done on the men.
[00:19:13] They were, simply put, assumed to be ‘good chaps’ because of who they were - they had come from good families, gone to the right schools, gone to Cambridge, they behaved like a British gentleman should behave.
[00:19:26] They were perfectly positioned for Act Two, what would turn out to be the most prolific and treacherous spy ring in British history.
[00:19:38] Ok then, that’s it for part one on this mini-series on the Cambridge Five, part one of this wonderful story.
[00:19:44] Next up we’ll get into the real ins and outs of what they did, how they did it, and how their personal vices got in the way, or perhaps even helped them, in their quest to betray their country.
[00:19:57] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:20:02] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
