STALIN'S APOSTLES: The Cambridge Five and the making of the Soviet Empire

The Cambridge Five are surrounded by myth. It was time for a new sober and revealing history of the most deadly spy ring ever. Paul Burke talks to Antonia Senior about her new thrilling account of Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt & Cairncross:

STALIN'S APOSTLES is a radical new look at the way five people allowed their obsession with Communist ideology to overshadow any sense of morality or decency - or loyalty to their country. Why did these gilded charming men, blessed with brains, and beauty and opportunities, choose to betray their country?
Using recently declassified files, STALIN'S APOSTLES explores as never before the treachery of Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, John Cairncross and Keeper of the Queen's Pictures Anthony Blunt, all radicalised while at Cambridge University in the 1930s. Their clandestine supply of British and US intelligence material gave Stalin an inside track on US and British decision-making until the implosion of the spy-ring in May 1951. There was barely a secret, barely a decision made, that Stalin did not know about, thanks to his Cambridge spies, and his networks in the United States. The Five became tools in Stalin's imperial scheme, responsible directly and indirectly for the death of thousands of men and women fighting against Soviet domination.
Shielded for so long by the British Establishment, four of the five were never prosecuted for their crimes. As STALIN'S APOSTLES reveals, they were exposed as much by their own incompetence as by forensic investigation by the CIA, MI5 or MI6. And in time another dictator emerged as ruthless as Stalin, but with an even greater desire to establish a Russian Empire that would threaten Western democracy. The legacy of the Cambridge Five is not only in the graveyards of eastern Europe, but at the heart of Putin's Kremlin.

Paul Burke is the new presenter of Spymasters and editor of Aspects of Crime. His first book Spies on Screen: From Silent to Streaming will be published in September.

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