Stalin’s Englishman: the lives of Guy Burgess

Part of the 32nd University of Cambridge Alumni Festival. Festival programme: Through interviews with over 100 people who knew Burgess personally and the discovery of hitherto secret files on the Cambridge Spies, Andrew Lownie, a former President of the Cambridge Union, reveals a completely new and intriguing picture of Guy Burgess, the most important, complex and fascinating of ’The Cambridge Spies’ Drawing on research in archives around the world and files released under Freedom of Information requests, Andrew Lownie recounts the full story of the treachery of the Cambridge Spy. He reveals how he was recruited at Cambridge as a damage limitation exercise but was soon regarded as the most important of the network by the Russians penetrating the BBC, the Foreign Office and both MI5 and MI6. He also provides new information on Burgess’s flight to Russia and his work for the Russians there. With a cast of characters ranging from Winston Churchill and Kim Philby to EM Forster and George Orwell, this promises to be an enthralling talk. Dr Andrew Lownie Andrew Lownie was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was Dunster History Prizeman and President of the Union, before taking his Masters and doctorate at Edinburgh University. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he later returned to Cambridge as a visiting fellow at Churchill College. He has been a bookseller, publisher, journalist, writing for the Times, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, Spectator and Guardian, and since 1988 has run his own literary agency specialising in history and biography. He is President of the Biographers Club, sits on the board of Biographers International Organisation and is a Trustee of the Campaign for Freedom of Information.