Guy Burgess was already living two different lives at once before he became a spy and was always happy for one to impinge on the other, indeed he enjoyed doing so and watching the results.
Born in 1911 to a wealthy upper-middle class English family Guy was schooled at Eton, the Royal Naval College Dartmouth and Trinity College, Cambridge. Such a background brings to mind a well mannered individual, respectful of his heritage and all it stood for.
Not so Guy. Flamboyantly gay from an early age Guy had been described, by the time he arrived at Cambridge as grubby and untidy and exceeded himself whilst at Trinity, being described there as 'a selfish lout' and 'dirty'. Guy was never much bothered with others opinions as he espoused his new left wing opinions with breath full of the garlic cloves he habitually chewed.
Dissolute and promiscous Guy was also precociously clever Guy. Though failing to leave Cambridge with the expected double first he was able to network and this, along with his leftwing views, led to his being talent-spotted by the already KGB agent Kim Philby who recommended him to his handler, Arnold Deutsch who, very perceptively, saw great potential in Guy's "inclinations of an adventurer" as a new recruit to the group who became 'The Cambridge Five'.
Guy's only concession to his life as a spy was to renounce his left wing views. He remained as contrary as ever through subsequent jobs at the BBC, where he was described as '"a snob and a slob..." The rabbit hole was open and Guy dived in.
His contrariness continued as he joined the Foreign Office and provided so much information to the Soviets that they thought it was to good to be true and that nobody as badly behaved and unkempt could possibly keep his job and he could, therefore, be a double agent.
Guy's fortune ran out and he and fellow spy Donald Maclean fled to Russia in 1951.
The rabbit hole now took on a darker hue as Guy pined for that part of British life he enjoyed as much as he rejected the system that had provided it. He wrestled, once again, with living two lives side by side and died of acute liver failure in 1963 aged just 53
His ashes are interred in a quiet churchyard in rural England, far from the now long gone Soviet Union.
Two recent biographies shed light on the strange and divided life/lives of Guy Burgess.
Just take the ISBN's 9781473627383 and 9781849549134 to your local bookshop for the full engrossing story.
Another rabbit hole soon...
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