Traitors : Communists and the Making of Modern Britain

What pushed Blunt, Burgess, Cairncross, Maclean and Philby into Soviet hands?

Looking at the revelations that rocked the intelligence world to its core, Richard Davenport-Hines returns with a sharp analysis of the spying world and beyond to unmask why these men and others betrayed national interest, loyalty and ideology for personal gain. Traitors follows the Cambridge Five (Blunt, Burgess, Cairncross, Maclean, and Philby) alongside a new cast of characters who who were collateral damage to the revelations of their duplicity, namely Victor Rothschild and Archie Clark Kerr (Lord Inverchapel).

By exploring the scandals associated with these men, this book provides a rational analysis of why and how these men and others were corrupted by foreign agents and what this cost Britain and its allies. The Cambridge Spies have attracted extensive interest but the allegations of Establishment cover-ups and high-level corruption never lose topicality.

As Cambridge undergraduates, these hedonistic, addiction-riddled bright minds were looked after.

They had good prospects and ascended to some of the most power positions within and outside of Britain, at governmental level - neither money nor blackmail were at stake.

So why did they do it? Opening to the shock-sensation of the unmasking of Sir Anthony Blunt's past as a spy in 1979 under Margaret Thatcher, Traitors offers glimpses of the complex reasoning that motivated Blunt and his infamous co-conspirators into living a lifetime of treachery and betrayal, using hindsight and new research to reject the common view of ideological clash. Masterful as ever, in this new study of the intelligence world Davenport-Hines places himself inside the heads of the men who had everything yet took the gamble of their lives, shining a new light on the Five.

With his astute eye for characterization, Davenport-Hines's rejection of the idea of the quintet as rebels of a class-bound society makes for a gripping look at how vanity drove these young spies to commit the unforgivable.