Andrew Lownie spent thirty years researching this book and interviewed more than a hundred sources, as the list of acknowledgements attests.
There are a few I know, or knew, including Peter Calvocoressi whom he interviewed in 1998. Uncle P was a contemporary of Burgess’s at Eton and their paths must have crossed because they were both brainy, although Peter was in College and Burgess was an Oppidan. Peter’s opinion of Guy Burgess is typically laconic:
’I don’t think it was strange that he never got into Pop. There were three kinds of Pop members: ex officio, good at games, an exceptionally “good chap”. He was none of those things.’
Lownie draws on a wide range of sources to build up a detailed and, as he admits, often contradictory picture of Burgess’s complex persona. He spares us no details of his sexual conquests, his poor personal hygiene and prodigious alcoholic intake. His success in the sex department is quite an achievement taking into account a predilection for chewing cloves of raw garlic and not washing his finger nails. He must have had considerable charisma.
Stalin’s Englishman is an engaging read and the prodigious research it contains is not indigestible. For example, Russian agent Arnold Deutsch was charged with recruiting clever university students as Soviet spies. “He did so spectacularly, recruiting some twenty agents between 1934 and 1937, most of whom remain unknown to this day.” Helpfully, Lownie supplies the code names for eleven of them in his Notes at the end. A Trinity man reading English describes Burgess as epicene and apolaustic. The latter had me foxed.
Apolaustic: devoted to enjoyment “a learned, apolaustic buffoon who loved good food”— James Stern
Unfortunately sloppy proof reading lets Lownie down. As usual Lloyd’s is used for Lloyds. (In Ben Schott’s Jeeves book it’s vice versa.) More seriously Desmond MacCarthy appears throughout as McCarthy. I am only mid-way through and may have further observations, meanwhile I am jolly pleased with this Christmas present from AM.
If you are having a dry January, I’m not, console yourself with some Sherry from Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons.