''Stalin's Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess'' is a biography of the Soviet spy

Guy Burgess Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess (16 April 1911 – 30 August 1963) was a British diplomat and Soviet double agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection ...

by historian

Andrew Lownie Andrew James Hamilton Lownie (born November 1961) is a British historian and author. Early life and education Andrew Lowine was born in November 1961, to father judge Ralph Hamilton Lownie of Largo (1924–2007). He was educated at Westminster ...

. The biography began as a dissertation submitted by Lownie for his doctorate at the University of Edinburgh.

Reception

This biography is considered to be the first of Burgess that understood the role that he played as one of the

Cambridge Five The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the Cold War and was active from the 1930s until at least the early 1950s. None of the known members were e ...

. Stalin's Englishman received positive reviews in ''The Times'', ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'', and ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

''. "Burgess", wrote

Richard Norton-Taylor Richard Seymour Norton-Taylor (born 6 June 1944) is a British editor, journalist, and playwright. He wrote for ''The Guardian'' on defence and security matters from 1975 to 2016, and was the newspaper's security editor. He now works for the i ...

in ''The Guardian'', "charming and often drunk, was a much more dangerous and effective spy than has been assumed." ''The Times'' review commented: "He was also the most ruthless of the Soviet spies active in England before 1951, and every bit as destructive as

Kim Philby Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963, he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring that had divulged British secr ...

." ''The Times'' described it as "one of the great biographies of 2015." Lownie's work demonstrated that, far from being the least important of the Cambridge Five, Burgess was perhaps the most interesting, most complicated, and most influential of the five. Through interviews with more than a hundred people who knew Burgess personally, many of whom have never spoken about him before, and the discovery of hitherto secret files, ''Stalin's Englishman'' brilliantly unravels the many lives of Guy Burgess in all their intriguing, chilling, colourful, tragi-comic wonder." ''The Daily Telegraph'' Writing in the ''

English Historical Review ''The English Historical Review'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal that was established in 1886 and published by Oxford University Press (formerly by Longman). It publishes articles on all aspects of history – British, European, a ...

'' in October 2017, Matthew Hughes described Lownie's biography as a "labour-of-love .. 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?"

Literary prizes

* Guardian Book of the Year * The Times Best Biography of the Year * Mail on Sunday Biography of the Year * Daily Mail Biography of Year * Spectator Book of the Year * BBC History Book of the Year

References

{{Authority control History books about the Soviet Union Biographical books