Stalin's Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess

About the book: 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.

About the author: Andrew Lownie was born in Kenya, brought up in Bermuda and educated in Asheville, North Carolina before attending the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. A former journalist for The London Times and the British representative for the Washington-based National Intelligence Centre, he helped set up the Spy Museum in Washington. Now a successful literary agent and the President of The Biographers Club , his books include an acclaimed life of the writer and former Governor General of Canada John Buchan.

This book lecture took place at The Institute of World Politics on October 11, 2016.