References and sources
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Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which had divulged British secrets to the Soviets during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets.
Alan Bennett is an English actor, author, playwright and screenwriter. Over his entertainment career he has received numerous awards and honours including two BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Tony Awards. He also earned an Academy Award nomination for his film The Madness of King George (1994). In 2005 he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award.
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and The Cold War and was active from the 1930s until at least the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly, from the 1950s onwards.
John Cairncross was a British civil servant who became an intelligence officer and spy during the Second World War. As a Soviet double agent, he passed to the Soviet Union the raw Tunny decryptions that influenced the Battle of Kursk. He was alleged to be the fifth member of the Cambridge Five. He was also notable as a translator, literary scholar and writer of non-fiction.
Anthony Frederick Blunt, styled Sir Anthony Blunt KCVO from 1956 to November 1979, was a leading British art historian and Soviet spy.
Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild was a British banker, scientist, intelligence officer during World War II, and later a senior executive with Royal Dutch Shell and N M Rothschild & Sons, and an advisor to the Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher governments of the UK. He was a member of the prominent Rothschild family.
Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess was a British diplomat and Soviet agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 1951 to the Soviet Union, with his fellow spy Donald Maclean, led to a serious breach in Anglo-United States intelligence co-operation, and caused long-lasting disruption and demoralisation in Britain's foreign and diplomatic services.
Donald Duart Maclean was a British diplomat who conveyed government secrets to the Soviet Union.
An Englishman Abroad is a 1983 BBC television drama film based on the true story of a chance meeting of actress Coral Browne with Guy Burgess, a member of the Cambridge spy ring who spied for the Soviet Union while an officer at MI6. The production was written by Alan Bennett and directed by John Schlesinger. Browne stars as herself.
Another Country is a play written by English playwright Julian Mitchell. It premiered on 5 November 1981 at the Greenwich Theatre, London.
Coral Edith Browne was an Australian-American stage and screen actress. Her extensive theatre credits included Broadway productions of Macbeth (1956), The Rehearsal (1963) and The Right Honourable Gentleman (1965). She won the 1984 BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the BBC TV film An Englishman Abroad (1983). Her film appearances included Auntie Mame (1958), The Killing of Sister George (1968), The Ruling Class (1972) and Dreamchild (1985). She was also actor Vincent Price's third wife.
Cambridge Spies is a four-part British drama miniseries written by Peter Moffat and directed by Tim Fywell, that was first broadcast on BBC Two in May 2003 and is based on the true story of four brilliant young men at the University of Cambridge who are recruited to spy for the Soviet Union in 1934.
Michael Whitney Straight was an American magazine publisher, novelist, patron of the arts, a member of the prominent Whitney family, and a confessed spy for the KGB.
George Innes Llewelyn Lloyd was a Welsh television producer. He had a long career in BBC drama, which included producing series such as Doctor Who and Talking Heads.
Bill Haydon is a fictional character created by John le Carré who features in le Carré's 1974 novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He is a senior officer in the British Secret Intelligence Service who serves as a Soviet mole. The novel follows aging spymaster George Smiley's endeavours to uncover the mole. The character is partly modelled after the real-life double agent Kim Philby, part of the notorious Cambridge Five spy ring in Britain, who defected to the USSR in 1963.
The Untouchable is a 1997 novel by John Banville. The book is written as a roman à clef, presented from the point of view of the art historian, double agent and homosexual Victor Maskell—a character based largely on Cambridge spy Anthony Blunt and in part on Irish poet Louis MacNeice.
Norman John Klugmann, generally known as James Klugmann, was a leading British Communist writer and WW2 Soviet Spy, who became the official historian of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Guy Maynard Liddell, CB, CBE, MC was a British intelligence officer.
Another Country is a 1984 British romantic historical drama written by Julian Mitchell, adapted from his play of the same name. Directed by Marek Kanievska, the film stars Rupert Everett and Colin Firth in his feature film debut.
Single Spies is a 1988 double bill written by the English playwright Alan Bennett. It consists of An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution, the former an adaptation of a television play the author had written for the BBC in 1983. Both plays depict members of the Cambridge spy ring and touch on their moral, political and aesthetic beliefs: the first shows Guy Burgess in exile in Moscow in 1958, seven years after absconding from Britain. The second focuses on Sir Anthony Blunt while he still holds high office in the Royal Household although known to the security services as a former Soviet agent. The title comes from a speech in Hamlet: ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.’
References
- ↑
- 1 2 Bennett, p. 14
- 1 2 "Screen One: A Question of Attribution", BBC Genome. Retrieved 16 July 2020
- ↑ New York Times review, retrieved 17 January 2006
- ↑ A Question of Attribution, BFI Screenonline, retrieved 17 January 2006
- ↑ Bennett, p. 71
- ↑ "The Saturday Play: Betrayal", BBC Genome. Retrieved 15 July 2020
Sources
- Bennett, Alan (1990). Single Spies: Two Plays about Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt; Talking Heads: Six Monologues. New York and London: Summit. ISBN 978-0-671-69249-0.