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Andrew Lownie’s labour-of-love biography of Guy Burgess (1911–1963) is a cracking read, rich with archival detail and interviews with those who knew Burgess. Lownie throws up three central questions: why did Burgess spy for the USSR, why did the British establishment not see him for what he was and how much damage did he do? Burgess was extraordinarily privileged and intellectually gifted—‘a wheel throwing off ideas like sparks’ (p. 109)—as well as being arrogant, a good friend, an alcoholic, a gossip, a furious name-dropper, a raw garlic muncher, a snob and a promiscuous homosexual. When a student at Cambridge, Burgess reacted to the Depression and the rise of fascism by becoming a socialist and then a communist, at which point the Soviets recruited him. His Soviet handlers noted his sexual orientation in their assessments of his weaknesses and motivations (pp. 55–6) which were far more astute than anything produced by the British, who belatedly introduced ‘positive vetting’ in the 1950s after Burgess had defected to the USSR.

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