Guy Burgess
Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess (born April 16, 1911 in Devonport , Plymouth , England , † August 30, 1963 in Moscow , Soviet Union ) was a British secret agent and double agent who also worked for the Soviet Union. He was a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring within MI5 .
Life
Like many members of the British upper class, Burgess went through Eton College , the Royal Naval Academy Dartmouth and later studied at Trinity College , Cambridge. There he got involved in a student debating club, where he met Anthony Blunt , both of whom were homosexual . Like many of his generation, he later joined the Communist Party . There he was introduced to the Cambridge Apostles , a strictly Marxist, secret association at the time.
In order to hide his pro-communist attitudes, he officially renounced communism and in 1934 joined the Anglo-German Fellowship , a pro-Nazi group that included British celebrities and Kim Philby . Between 1936 and 1944 he worked for the BBC , where he produced The Week program in Westminster . Between 1939 and 1941 he assisted MI5 in creating war propaganda. In 1944 Burgess joined the Foreign Office , where he worked in the intelligence department. In 1947 Burgess served as the second secretary of the British Embassy in Washington, DC .
In 1951, Kim Philby warned Burgess and Donald Maclean , a student friend and like Burgess alcoholics, that Maclean was under suspicion and that both were likely to be exposed. Both fled and went into hiding. In 1956 both reappeared in Moscow . From then on he lived there under the false name Jim Andrejewitsch Elliott.
Burgess died in Moscow in 1963. His ashes were transferred and buried in his father's grave in West Meon on October 5th .
Books and films
- Julian Mitchell : Another Country. Amber Lane Pr., Oxford 1983, ISBN 0-906399-31-9 ( filmed as Another Country by Marek Kanievska in 1994 )
- Alan Bennett : To Englishman Abroad. In: Single Spies. Faber & Faber, London 1998, ISBN 0-571-14105-6 ( filmed in 1983 by John Schlesinger for the BBC )
- Verne Newton : Cambridge Spies: the untold story of MacLean, Philby and Burgess in America. Madison Books, Lanham, Md. 1991, ISBN 0-8191-8059-9
- Cambridge Spies , four-part TV series on the BBC (2003)
literature
- Fred Sommer: Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess, Gay Spies. In: Journal of Homosexuality 29, 1995, pp. 273-294
- WT Tyler: Deceiving the deceivers. Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn. 2004. ISBN 0-300-10416-2
Web links
- Guy Burgess in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Fred Sommer: Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess, Gay Spies ; Pp. 273-294.
- ↑ Why did Teento pile up? , DER SPIEGEL 25/1951, p. 20.
- ↑ register DER SPIEGEL 37/1963, S. 100th
- ^ Edward Tangye Lean: The Napoleonists: a study in political disaffection, 1760-1960 . Oxford UP, 1970, p. 348
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Burgess, Guy |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | de Moncy Burgess, Guy Francis |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British journalist and spy |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 16, 1911 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Devonport , Plymouth, England |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 30, 1963 |
| Place of death | Moscow |