Word: maclean
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Blunt insisted that he had stopped spying for the Soviets in 1945, shortly before he was named surveyor of the King's pictures. Six years later, however, he got in touch with a Soviet contact "on behalf of Burgess, a few days before his friend and Donald Maclean escaped to Moscow, just as British agents were closing in on them. But the man who actually tipped them off, Blunt insisted, was the so-called third man in the spy network, H.A.R. ("Kim") Philby. At week's end, Blunt confirmed that, at a later date, he had also contacted...
...relation to this social revolution rather than to any serious preoccupation with Marxism that the spy scandal must be seen. Of the four principal characters who have emerged so far, Maclean is the only one who might be assumed to have devoted any serious study to Marx's writings. Burgess's two most prized possessions, which he insisted on showing to everyone, were an inscribed copy of Winston Churchill's war memoirs and a note from Anthony Eden in his own hand thanking Burgess for being so attentive during a visit to Washington. These would scarcely rate...
More evident than a common grasp of Marxism was the common practice of homosexuality, at least as far as Burgess, Maclean and Blunt were concerned. Here again Philby was different, being an ardent womanizer, though, it would seem, odd in his ways. His third wife, an American lady acquired in Beirut, in her excellent little book The Spy I Loved, describes how he wooed her, which involved sending her a whole series of loving messages written on tiny pieces of tissue paper, with instructions to burn them when read and carefully scatter the ash, or, if that should be inconvenient...
...Burgess and Maclean, who had been recalled to London, fled to Moscow. Twelve years later, the British government identified H.A.R. ("Kim") Philby, a diplomat-turned-journalist and fellow spy, as the "third man," who had tipped the two that they were about to be caught. Philby had by then followed Burgess and Maclean to Moscow. But Boyle claims that it was Blunt who was the tipster, phoning Burgess on May 25, 1951, a Friday, to warn him that British authorities would begin interrogating Maclean the following Monday...
Thatcher's version is different. According to her, British intelligence questioned Blunt eleven times between 1951 and 1964. In the initial investigation of Burgess and Maclean, said Thatcher, an unnamed source told the spy catchers that Maclean had said he was a "Comintern agent" as early as 1937 and that Blunt was one of his contacts. But the investigators could find no concrete evidence of treason, and finally decided that only an offer of immunity could induce Blunt to talk. The offer was made, Thatcher said. Blunt confessed and "subsequently provided useful information about Russian intelligence activities." The Queen...