This unique series of Tuesday talks at The Old Courtroom (118 Church St  Brighton BN1 1UD) will continue at 7pm with Andrew Lownie, who believes Guy Burgess was the most important, complex and fascinating of 'The Cambridge Spies' - Maclean, Philby, Blunt - all brilliant young men recruited in the 1930s to betray their country to the Soviet Union.

An engaging and charming companion to many, an unappealing, utterly ruthless manipulator to others, Burgess rose through academia, the BBC, the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6, gaining access to thousands of highly sensitive secret documents which he passed to his Russian handlers.


In this first full biography, Andrew has shown how even Burgess's chaotic personal life of drunken philandering did nothing to stop his penetration and betrayal of the British Intelligence Service. Even when he was under suspicion, the fabled charm which had enabled many close personal relationships with influential Establishment figures (including Winston Churchill) prevented his exposure as a spy for many years.

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Burgess’s scores of lovers ranged from lorry drivers and sailors to leading Establishment figures including Harold Nicolson, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean and James Pope Hennessy, and even several women.

Through interviews with more than a hundred people who knew Burgess personally, many of whom have never spoken about him before, and the discovery of hitherto secret files, Stalin's Englishman brilliantly unravels the many lives of Guy Burgess in all their intriguing, chilling, colourful, tragi-comic wonder.

About Andrew Lownie: http://stalinsenglishman.co.uk/about-the-author/