My brother the spy – three tales of fraternal treason in The Cold War
The Cold War produced a clutch of notorious British spies. There have been many books, plays and films about them. They have become regrettable bit players in our national story. Each of them had a family story too, though. Parents, siblings, wives and children, dragged into public view through no faults of their own.
The names of three spies still resonate; Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. All three were drawn to Soviet Communism whilst at Cambridge in the 1930s. The lives and attitudes of each man’s brother, as told through memoirs and personal correspondence, provide insights into their feelings of personal loss and betrayal, but also of their enduring love. To some extent at least, family trumped treachery.
Maclean, son of a senior Liberal politician and raised in a strongly religious family tradition, became an unwavering ‘believer’ in Communism. Burgess was without anything approaching a religious sensibility and his erratic ways were in the end driven as much by drink as by ideology. Blunt came from a religious background as well (slightly improbably a grandson of the Suffragan Bishop of Hull), and was coldly analytical but without the long-term commitment of faith of the true believer in Soviet-style Communism. Though very different characters, each of the spies sprang from an establishment milieu that instinctively trusted its own. They were not ‘outsiders’ but through their spying made themselves so, if in Blunt’s case reluctantly and late. They became the black sheep of their families.
Donald Maclean was the second eldest of four brothers, the youngest of whom, Alan, always looked up to him. Guy Burgess had one brother, Nigel, two years his junior who worked for MI5 (the Security Service) until 1947 when he was a casualty of budget cuts to the organisation. Anthony Blunt had two brothers, the one he was closest to, Wilfrid, was six years his senior and became a schoolteacher and writer. In all three cases, the disclosures of espionage came as a shocking surprise to their brothers. Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess defected to the Soviet Union in May 1951 though their presence there was not publicly admitted by the Russians until 1956. Initially, their departure was wrapped in uncertainties and the press portrayed them as the ‘missing diplomats’. Blunt made a deal with the British authorities in 1964 securing immunity from prosecution in return for admitting his past espionage and sharing information about it; he avoided public exposure for a further fourteen years. His brother Wilfred knew nothing of Anthony’s wartime espionage until Margaret Thatcher disclosed it in a statement to the House of Commons in November 1979.
Of the three the one most adversely affected by his brother’s espionage was Alan Maclean. In June 1951 Cynthia Gladwyn, wife of the then British Ambassador to the United Nations in New York, wrote to a relative:
“We have been concerned about the ‘missing diplomats’, particularly because Alan Maclean is the younger brother of Donald. Donald is extremely tall and good-looking, quite spectacular in fact, and had a breakdown last year … It is possible that Burgess is only some great debauch, but it is all very unpleasant, whatever the outcome is.”
Alan Maclean was serving as Private Secretary to Lord Gladwyn. Donald’s secret life was entirely unknown to him and there was never any suggestion or evidence that Alan was involved in any way in Donald’s treachery. But that did not stop the Foreign Secretary, Herbert Morrison, from demanding Alan’s resignation from the Diplomatic Service. He had himself done nothing wrong; he was simply Donald’s brother.
Alan was on holiday on the New Jersey coast in May 1951. He was suddenly telephoned by a senior member of the UK Mission and told to return to New York. He was then shown a confidential telegram from London which read: “Donald Maclean disappeared. Fear another breakdown. Send Alan back immediately.” On arrival in London Alan was met at the steps of the plane and taken by official car to the Foreign Office in Whitehall, where he had the first of several encounters with Jim Skardon, the Special Branch officer assigned as an investigator for MI5. Skardon prided himself on his use of quiet, insistent persuasion to unmask espionage. Alan Maclean was treated gently but with menaces, including a number of references to his kind and loving mother. Alan recalled a later meeting with a Foreign Office official:
“There looked to be a bad smell under his nose and it was me …. In the end I gave in.”
The deal offered was that in return for his resignation he would be given a glowing reference and a small gratuity. Alan accepted it. Herbert Morrison had his wish. Alan Maclean’s promising diplomatic career had been destroyed by an accident of association, a family tie.
Donald Maclean’s whereabouts in the Soviet Union only became known publicly in 1956. His mother corresponded with him regularly until her death in 1962. Alan would seem to have kept his distance. He had taken up a new career with Macmillan publishers. He had to make a new life for himself after his brother had effectively derailed his earlier one.
But Alan did not forget his brother or his underlying love for him. When Donald was ill and close to death in 1983, Alan flew to Moscow to spend time with him. He recalled his initial encounter:
“We walked slowly because Donald used a stick. He looked not too bad, a bit grey in the bright airport lights. We held hands rather shyly like children. It was going to be alright.”
The two brothers had only a few days together. They recalled the past:
“We talked greedily for hours that evening – mostly about our childhoods, separated by 12 years. As we said good night and were slouching off to our lairs I had the feeling that in his head he was still 19, embarking instead of disembarking. ‘You’re not meant to have grey hair,’ he said.”
Nigel Burgess was only two years younger than Guy. They had never been as close as they might have been partly because Guy was so obviously the apple of his mother’s eye. She sent him money and gifts (including food hampers from Fortnum and Mason) after his defection. But Nigel did not sever all contact with Guy and, at the end, chose to be with him.
Wilfred Blunt was closer to his brother Anthony than either of them were to Christopher, their other brother. Their father was the Anglican Chaplain attached to the British Embassy in Paris where they lived when not at school at Marlborough. They were not rich by any means but they were privileged. Wilfred and Anthony had much in common, not least a shared enjoyment of art, but different attitudes to most things. As Wilfred contrasted them:
“My approach was, and remained, that of the emotional, undisciplined romantic; his was scholarly. He cast his net deep; I cast mine wide. My urge was to create, his to study and analyse. Politics – Marxist or any other brand – meant nothing to me …”
Wilfred became an admired schoolteacher whilst Anthony climbed the academic heights to become director of the Courtauld Institute and serve as the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures. Their lives ran amiably in parallel until Mrs Thatcher’s statement in 1979. Wilfred recalled that he and the rest of the family knew nothing “… of the distressing disclosure of Anthony’s treachery.” But brotherly love is fostered early and Wilfred reflected in his memoirs:
“Whatever he did, and however much I may deplore it, I remain devoted and deeply grateful to the Anthony I knew for more than seventy years; that other Anthony I shall never really know or understand.”
Guy Burgess was the first of the three spies to die. Given his steady descent into alcoholism, that is hardly surprising. His life ended in Moscow in August 1963 aged only 52. Nigel went to Moscow for the funeral at Donskoi Crematorium. It lasted only seventeen minutes. He helped carry the coffin alongside Donald Maclean, Jeremy Wolfenden and three others. The Internationale was played by a contingent of the Moscow Silver Band. Nigel’s final service to Guy was to arrange for his brother’s ashes to be brought for interment in a plot next to that of his late father in West Meon in Hampshire in October 1963.
Donald Maclean died in Moscow shortly after Alan’s visit in 1983. He was 69. After cremation, his ashes were brought back to Britain and interred after a discrete burial service at Penn in Buckinghamshire. His son, Fergus, had arranged this with the local Vicar but Alan was delayed by heavy traffic and by the time he arrived it was dark. Not to be put off, the Vicar conducted the burial rights by use of a battery torch.
Anthony Blunt also died in 1983, but he did so as a disgraced spy in England. His funeral was at Putney Vale Crematorium. With him at the end as principal mourners were his two brothers, Wilfred and Christopher.
All three spies found final rest on British soil. Burgess and Maclean after cremation first in the Soviet Union were returned to the Home Counties. Blunt, who had hidden his past for so long and always remained in Britain, was accompanied by his brother as he ended his days in south west London.