Stalin's Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring

Andrew Lownie

Jan 2017 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Steven Crossley

About this audiobook

Guy Burgess was the most important, complex, and fascinating of "The Cambridge Spies"-Maclean, Philby, Blunt-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. In this first full biography, Andrew Lownie shows us how even Burgess's chaotic personal life did nothing to stop his penetration and betrayal of the British Intelligence Service. Even when he was under suspicion, the fabled charm which had enabled many close personal relationships with influential Establishment figures (including Winston Churchill) prevented his exposure as a spy for many years. Through interviews with more than a hundred people who knew Burgess personally, many of whom have never spoken about him before, and the discovery of hitherto secret files, Stalin's Englishman brilliantly unravels the many lives of Guy Burgess in all their intriguing, chilling, colorful, tragi-comic wonder.

About the author

After graduating from Cambridge University, where he won the Dunster Prize for History, Andrew Lownie went on to earn a postgraduate degree in history at Edinburgh University. He is now a successful literary agent, and has written or edited several books, including an acclaimed biography of John Buchan.

Steven Crossley has recorded over two hundred audiobooks and has won multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, his audiobook performances cover an eclectic range of subjects in both fiction and nonfiction.