Spying (in)spires: The dwindling likelihood of an Oxford spy ring to rival the Cambridge Five

ABSTRACT

This article asks why no comparable spy ring to the Cambridge Five developed concurrently at Oxford University and argues that, based on an updated and comprehensive review of primary and secondary sources, holding out hope for a new revelation of one may be waiting for Godot. We argue that whilst structural and institutional factors played a significant role in the creation of a mid-20^th century Cambridge spy ring, the role and agency of individuals was paramount, and Oxford was missing comparable personalities. Specifically, the galvanising effect of an intellectual authority figure in the person of Cambridge Don Maurice Dobb, the greater attention, talent, and strategy by Soviet intelligence recruiter Arnold Deutsch, and the higher level of ideological commitment and social reinforcement on the part of the Cambridge Five themselves—as a ring—were of greater significance. Not all these factors were present in Oxford and casts increasing doubt on whether an equivalent Oxford spy ring ever existed. Recently declassified files reveal that Oxford did produce Soviet era spies, but never a collective akin to that of the infamous Cambridge spies, who remain a unique historical and cultural touchstone to the present day.

KEYWORDS:

• Intelligence
• Soviet
• KGB
• espionage
• university

Disclaimer

This analysis is solely that of the authors. It represents no official government or agency position nor endorsement.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Connolly, C., The Missing Diplomats, (Queen Anne Press, London, 1952) was the first book published on Burgess and Maclean and is almost entirely sources by conversations had with friends of theirs. Some of the earliest books about the Cambridge spies, until the late 1970s, were by journalists without the benefit of archival resources.

2. David Burke, The Spy Who Came In From The Co-op: Melita Norwood and the Ending of Cold War Espionage (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2008). Norwood was recruited by Soviet intelligence in the mid-1930s and served as a career communist alongside her official duties; she was only unmasked after the Cold War ended. Her life has had the Hollywood treatment in Red Joan illustrating that there remains a fascination with espionage outside of the key film franchisees, such as Ian Fleming’s character James Bond.

3. Andrew, C., and Mitrokhin, V., The Mitrokhin Archive The KGB in Europe and the West, (Penguin Books, London, 2000), p.104–5.

4. Deutsch returned to the UK to undertake PhD study in Psychology in June 1936. KV2/4428 Arnold Deutsch.

5. The NVKD became the KGB (the Soviet Committee for State Security) in 1954. KV2/4428 Arnold Deutsch, The National Archives, Kew.

6. Maly (also known as Paul Hardt) was principally based on continental Europe but made frequent trips to the UK to assist Deutsch with handling the Cambridge spies in particular. KV2/1008 Paul Hardt.

7. See, for instance, Kevin Quinlan, The Secret War Between the Wars: MI5 in the 1920s and 1930s (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2014).

8. Christopher M. Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2001), 28; Victor Madeira, ‘Moscow’s Interwar Infiltration of British Intelligence, 1919–1929’, The Historical Journal 46, no. 4 (December 23, 2003): 915–933, 916.

9. Madeira, “Moscow’s Interwar Infiltration of British Intelligence,” 927.

10. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, 36.

11. Ibid.

12. Christopher M. Andrew, Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2010), 166.

13. Ibid., 170.

14. Ibid.

15. Note undated D.D, Maclean FCO158/186.

16. Christopher M. Andrew and David Dilks, eds., The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the 20th Century (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1985), 1–2.

17. See the Elementary Education Act 1870, https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/school/overview/1870educationact/

18. Porter, R., England in the Eighteenth Century, (The Folio Society, London, 1998), p. 152.

19. Ibid.

20. Lowe, R., The Official History of The British Civil Service: Reforming the Civil Service, Volume I: The Fulton years, 1966–81, (Routledge, London, 2011), p. 17.

21. Ibid, p., 24.

22. KV2/4108 Burgess, Guy Francis de Moncy.

23. Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Secret World: Behind the Curtain of British Intelligence in World War II and the Cold War, (New York, NY: I.B Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2014), 170.

24. Ibid.

25. Duncan Bowie, Reform and Revolt in the City of Dreaming Spires: Radical, Socialist and Communist Politics in the City of Oxford 1830–1980, (London: University of Westminster Press, 2018), 248.

26. B.2.b to B.1.f Information about the Cambridge careers of CURZON [Maclean], BURGESS, and PEACH [Philby] 5 October 1951 in KV2/4146.

27. Cairncross, J., The Enigma Spy The Story Of The Man Who Changed The Course Of World War Two, (Century, London, 1997), p. 61 Declassified files now show that Cairncross’ confessed to being recruited after he joined the Foreign Office: his confession was dated 1964. CAB301/270 John Cairncross, former member of the Foreign Service: confession to spying

28. Gioe D.V., & Joseph M. Hatfield, A damage assessment framework for insider threats to national security information: Edward Snowden and the Cambridge Five in comparative historical perspective, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 34:5, 704–738.

29. Leading treatments of one or more members of the Five include Cyril Connolly The Missing Diplomats (London: Queen Anne Press, 1952), John Fisher, Burgess and Maclean (London: Robert Hale,1977); Andrew Boyle, The Climate of Treason (London: Hutchinson,1979); Verne Newton, Butcher’s Embrace: Philby Conspirators in Washington (London: Little Brown, 1991); John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, Deadly Illusion (London: Century,1993); Yuri Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends (London: Headline,1994); Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archives (London: Collins,1998); SJ Hamrick, Deceiving the Deceivers: Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess (London: Yale,2004); Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, Triplex: Secrets from the Cambridge Spies (London: Yale, 1998); Richard Davenport-Hines, Enemies Within: Communists, the Cambridge Spies and the Making of Modern Britain (London: Collins, 2018), Eleanor Philby, Kim Philby: The Spy I Loved (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1968); Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville, Philby: The Long Road to Moscow (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1973); Philip Knightley, Philby: The Life and Views of the KGB Masterspy (London: Andre Deutsch, 1988); Genrikh Borovik and Philip Knightley (eds), The Philby Files (London: Little Brown,1994); Rufina Philby with Hayden Peake and Mikhail Lyubimov, The Private Life of Kim Philby (Illinois: Fromm, 2000); Ben McIntyre, A Spy Among Friends (London: Bloomsbury, 2014) Tim Milne, Kim Philby: The Unknown Story of the KGB’s Master Spy (London: Biteback, 2014), Barrie Penrose and Simon Freeman, Conspiracy of Silence: The Secret Life of Anthony Blunt (London: Grafton,1986); John Costello, Mask of Treachery: The First Documented Dossier on Blunt, MI5 and Soviet Subversion (London: Collins, 1988); Miranda Carter, Anthony Blunt: His Lives (London: Macmillan, 2001); Geoffrey Hoare, The Missing Macleans (London: Cassell, 1955); Robert Cecil, A Divided Life: A Biography of Donald Maclean (London: Bodley Head, 1988); Michael Holzman, Donald and Melinda Maclean: Idealism and Espionage (New York: Chelmsford Press, 2014); Roland Philipps, A Spy Called Orphan (London: Bodley Head, 2018); John Cairncross, The Enigma Spy (London: Century, 1997) and Geoff Andrews, John Cairncross (London: IB Tauris, 2018), Andrew Lownie, Stalin’s Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess (London: Hodder, 2015).

30. Blunt, A., unpublished manuscript, The British Library (BL): ADD Ms. 88002/1 UNBOUND 4072 F.

31. Rees, J., Dangerous Friends My Father and the Cambridge Spy Ring, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2022) and Philipps, R., A Spy Named Orphan The Enigma of Donald Maclean, (Vintage, London, 2019)

32. Draft Chapter of untitled Philby manuscript in FCO 158/29.

33. Note by de la Mare (FO) 12 October 1954 in FCO 158/29.

34. Ibid.

35. Kim Philby, My Silent War, (New York, NY: The Modern Library, 1968), xxv-xxvi.

36. CAB301/677 Kim Philby: media, issues & publications, part 1

37. Ibid., xxvi.

38. Phillip Knightley, The Master Spy: the Story of Kim Philby, (New York, NY: Knopf, 1988), 216.

39. Ibid., 192.

40. Ibid., 265.

41. Rufina Philby, Hayden Peake and Mikhail Lyubimov The Private Life of Kim Philby The Moscow Years (London: St Ermin’s Press, 1999)

42. John Cairncross. The Enigma Spy: The Story of the Man who Changed the Course of World War Two, (London: Century, 1997).

43. CAB301/270 John Cairncross, a former member of the Foreign Service: confession to spying.

44. Gayle Cairncross-Gow, ‘Secrets and Spies’, The Guardian, May 14, 2003, (accessed February 07, 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2003/may/15/features11.g2.

45. Robert Armstrong to Mr Wicks, The Blunt Papers, 23 June 1987, The National Archives (hereafter TNA): PREM 19/3942, document reference: A087/1816.

46. The Times, Thursday 23 July 2009, page 16 (Personal cutting collection)

47. Hansard, Written Ministerial Statement, 15 November 1979, vol. 973, col. 680 (‘Security’).

48. Hansard, HC Debate, 21 November 1979, vol. 974, col. 402 (‘Mr Anthony Blunt’).

49. Boyle, A., The Climate of Treason Five who Spied for Russia, (Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., London, 1979), p. 10

50. Costello, J., Mask of Treachery, (Collins, London, 1988), p. 9

51. Lowie, A., Stalin’s Englishman The Lives of Guy Burgess, (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2015)

52. Costello, J., Mask of Treachery, (Collins, London, 1988), p. 155

53. Robert Cecil, A Divided Life: A Biography of Donald Maclean, (London: Coronet, 1990), 190. The Maclean family plot can be found at Holy Trinity Church, Penn, Buckinghamshire.

54. Examples include Robert Cecil, “’C’s’ War,” Intelligence and National Security Vol 1 Number 2, 1986 and Robert Cecil, ‘Philby’s Spurious War’, Intelligence and National Security Vol 9 Number 4, 1994

55. Yuri Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, (New York, NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1995), 272.

56. Ibid., 273.

57. Modin, Y., with Deniau, J., and Ziarek, A., My Five Cambridge Friends, (Headline Book Publishing, London, 1995), p.199 Translation Roberts, A.

58. Miranda Carter, Anthony Blunt: His Lives, (New York, NY: Picador, 2003), xiv.

59. Ibid.

60. Andrew Lownie, Stalin’s Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring, (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 326.

61. Ibid.

62. Philipps, R., A Spy Named Orphan The Enigma of Donald Maclean, (Vintage, London, 2019), p. 381

63. Ibid., p. 85–88

64. Ibid., p. 120.

65. John Costello, Mask of Treachery (London: Collins, 1988); and, Andrew Boyle, The Climate of Treason (London: Hutchinson,1979) Both books spend more time devoted to discussing Burgess and Philby than their purported subject, Blunt.

66. Andrew, C., and Gordievsky, O., KGB The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev, (Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., London, 1990), p. 171

67. Andrew, C., and Mitrokhin, V., The Mitrokhin Archive The KGB in Europe and the West, (Penguin Books, London, 2000), p. xxiv

68. Ibid., p. xxiii.

69. Intelligence and Security Committee, The Mitrokhin Inquiry Report, Cm 4764, June 2000, p. 9, paragraph 2. The Report is somewhat unique, it investigates an intelligence success: ‘The Committee wish to pay tribute to this outstanding piece of intelligence work’. p. 11, paragraph 12

70. Andrew, C., and Mitrokhin, V., The Mitrokhin Archive The KGB in Europe and the West, (Penguin Books, London, 2000), p. 572

71. Ibid., p. 450.

72. Philipps, R., A Spy Named Orphan The Enigma of Donald Maclean, (Vintage, London, 2019), p. 357

73. Ibid., p. 359.

74. Andrew, C., and Mitrokhin, V., The Mitrokhin Archive The KGB in Europe and the West, (Penguin Books, London, 2000), p. 524

75. Jenifer Hart, Ask Me No More: An Autobiography, (London: Peter Halban, 1998)

76. Christopher Andrew, Defend the Realm, pp. 180, 583.

77. Ibid., p. 378.

78. The Spycatcher case files series officially listed by The National Archives’ catalogue as file series—CAB 164, remain closed but a search of Kew’s database using the search term ‘Spycatcher’ will produce two files that are available to researchers.

79. Peter Wright and Paul Greengrass, Spycatcher, (Paris: R. Laffont, 1987) pp. 264–265.

80. Jenifer Hart, Ask Me No More: An Autobiography, (London: Peter Halban, 1998) pp. 64, 71.

81. Ibid., p. 71.

82. Nigel West, “The Oxford Spy Ring,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 12/2, pp. 233–6.

83. Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

84. John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).

85. Calder Walton, “Dreaming Spies: The Inside Story of the KGB at Oxford,” Prospect Magazine. December 01, 2017, https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/dreaming-spies-the-inside-story-of-the-kgb-at-oxford.

86. Christopher Andrew, Defence of the Realm The Authorized History of MI5 (Allen Lane, London, 2009), 59–60

87. Tony Allen‑Mills and Nicholas Hellen, “Unmasked: the Daily Telegraph reporter David ‘Pink’ Floyd who spied for Moscow,” The Sunday Times, February 25, 2018, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/unmasked-the-daily-telegraph-reporter-david-pink-floyd-who-spied-for-moscow-gv9mqp0vt (accessed March 04, 2018).

88. Ibid.

89. Yuri Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, 48–49.

90. ”MI5 Surveillance on Maurice Dobb,” The National Archives, KV 2/1758.

91. Christopher Andrew, Defend the Realm, 167; “MI5 Surveillance on Maurice Dobb,” The National Archives at Kew, UK, KV 2/1758; Calder Walton, “Dreaming Spies: The Inside Story of the KGB at Oxford,” Prospect Magazine. December 01, 2017, https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/dreaming-spies-the-inside-story-of-the-kgb-at-oxford, Yuri Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, 49.

92. Yuri Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, p. 50.

93. Ibid., 36; Yuri Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, 49.

94. ”MI5 Surveillance on Maurice Dobb,” The National Archives, 1923–1945, KV 2/1758.

95. Andrew, Defend the Realm, 170.

96. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, 199.

97. Kevin Quinlan, The Secret War Between the Wars: MI5 in the 1920s and 1930s, (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), 82–83.

98. Ibid., 201; Andrew, Defend the Realm, 171.

99. As quoted in Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive, 75.

100. Ibid.

101. Joseph W. Wippl, “The Qualities That Make a Great Case Officer,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 25/3: 599, 601–602.

102. Andrew, Defend the Realm, 171.

103. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, 198–199.

104. Andrew, Defend the Realm, 171–172.

105. Calder Walton, “Dreaming Spies”.

106. Wright and Greengrass, Spycatcher, 264.

107. Ben Macintyre and Steve Bird, “Civil Servant Arthur Wynn Revealed as Recruiter of Oxford Spies,” The Times, May 13, 2009, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/civil-servant-arthur-wynn-revealed-as-recruiter-of-oxford-spies-xnkbcnllgft (accessed March 20, 2018).

108. Walton, “Dreaming Spies”.

109. Ibid.

110. Andrew, Defend the Realm, 170.

111. Idea brought up by Jeff Hulbert in private discussions with him.

112. KV2/4428 Arnold Deutsch.

113. Andrew, Defend the Realm, 172–173.

114. Special Operations Executive, SOE Manual: How to Be an Agent in Occupied Europe, (London: William Collins/National Archives, 2014), Kindle Cloud Reader E-Book Location 908; credit to Jeff Hulbert who brought up the SOE.

115. West, N., and Tsarev, O., The Crown Jewels The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archives, (HarperCollins Publishers, London, 1998), p. 167

116. Andrew, Defend the Realm, 422.

117. Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, 200.

118. Ibid., 199.

119. Ibid., 204.

120. For further detail see https://www.kcl.ac.uk/how-a-poorly-drafted-telegram-spelled-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-cambridge-five

121. Ibid., 200.

122. Philby, My Silent War, 172.

123. Idea brought up by Jeff Hulbert in private discussion.

124. Wright and Greengrass, Spycatcher, 264–265.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the British Academy [Global Professor Programme].