Introduction vii
1. ‘A normal, healthy, English boy’ 1
A disrupted education, 1911–30
2. ‘A real rapscallion’ 15
A scholarship student goes rogue, 1930–36
3. ‘Mr Burgess is away today’ 61
Serving more than one master, 1936–38
4. i am ‘anxious to appoint a Mr Guy Burgess’ 103
British Intelligence embraces a KGB spy, 1938–41
5. ‘Everyone Under the Sun’ 127
Networking at Westminster, 1941–44
6. ‘An important promotion that can be put to valuable use’ 175
Properly established in the establishment, 1944–50
7. ‘Good reason to hope he would make a useful career’ 211
Crucial decisions at the Foreign Office and MI5, 1950–51
8. ‘This peculiarly British field of counter-espionage’ 273
And then there were five spies, or was it six or seven? 1951 onwards
9. ‘I had no idea how much I was loathed’ 317
Settling into the USSR, 1951–56
10. ‘I would rather like to go back to England’ 347
Decline and death, 1956–63
11. ‘Burgess is, of course, Brigadier Brilliant’ 393
Towards the truth, 1951–2016
Bibliography 417
Acknowledgements 425
Endnotes 427
Index 463