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

Introduction

With a few notable exceptions such as the years of both the First and Second World Wars, and 2020 due to the Coronavirus pandemic, nearly 7 kilometers of the river Thames has closed annually since 1856 between Putney and Mortlake for the Oxford versus Cambridge University Boat Race. Since 1872 the Dark Blues of Oxford and Light Blues of Cambridge have met annually for a rugby match drawing audiences far beyond what is typically expected for university athletics. The current array of competitions between these two ancient English universities are too numerous to count and range from ice hockey to blind wine tasting. Aside from the playing fields, Oxford and Cambridge compete academically for reputational rankings, such as in the annual Times Higher Education World Rankings, and bragging rights such as the number of Nobel Prizes awarded to faculty and alumni. Taking the long view, Oxford and Cambridge seem to compete evenly in most events, but Cambridge vastly surpasses its Oxfordshire rival in having produced the most consequential turncoats in British history. What explains this historical anomaly? Could it be a simple historical accident that Cambridge attracted more applicants sympathetic to the communist, or at least anti-fascist, cause? Is it the case that Soviet intelligence simply put more effort into recruiting students from Cambridge? Perhaps, Oxford students simply employed better counterintelligence tradecraft and avoided detection? Or, despite so many commonalities, was there a significant difference in the contextual milieu in Cambridge? Can personalities and individuals account for this discrepancy? How can sons from similar ranks of society and schooling have turned out so differently by the time they concluded their university education?

Before declassification, particularly of the Security Service files, the earliest accounts of the Cambridge Five came from journalists who enjoyed conversations, both on and off the record, with their sources.¹ Intelligence historians, whose work in based in archives, seem to be ever-anxiously waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop and ageing defectors to come forward or new files to be released which conclusively show that Oxford did in fact rival Cambridge in producing turncoats, but this seems increasingly unlikely with the passage of time and no promising indications from recently declassified British government files. Still, dramatic cases of long-hidden Soviet spies, like the octogenarian Melita Norwood, give the historian hope that there are still chapters left to write.² The likelihood of interwar and Second World War era turncoats coming forward decreases with each passing year, thus archives and declassification of documents from this period offer the most likely source of new information. There is much to still learn about the secret world, but the existence of an as-yet unidentified Oxford spy ring, beyond what is already known, seems improbable, but not impossible. To be clear, a spy ‘ring’ is a self-reinforcing network of agents instead of a grouping of single spies independently reporting to their handlers. (A ‘ring’ is a much rarer occurrence, and also poses increased counterintelligence challenges given the linkages between the agents. Indeed, these linkages that will be further explored in detail are how the Cambridge Five network was identified.) While it seems to stand to reason that Oxford must mirror its ancient rival in all metrics and traditions, the memoirs and declassified files that enter the public domain suggest that it is actually less plausible despite some tantalising new clues: there are hints in declassified Cambridge Five related files that Burgess’ close friend Goronwy Rees had similar Marxist sympathies whilst at Oxford and used his position at All-Souls College to pursue what Christopher Andrew called ‘Burgess’ Oxbridge strategy’.³

Despite Burgess’ and the NKVD’s (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, predecessor of the KGB) efforts at Oxford, three critical factors impeded their attempts at recruiting a stable of productive agents, and account for the lopsided result. Specifically, budding Cambridge communists had the leading intellectual force of economist and Trinity College Fellow Maurice Dobb, whose academic authority and activism gave the students the intellectual foundations for their future path. Crucially, no such comparable figure existed at Oxford. Second, the talented Soviet intelligence recruiter Arnold Deutsch (codenamed ‘Otto’) proposed a novel approach to intelligence collection. With his academic tendencies and credentials Deutsch realised that with patience and acting as a mentor to febrile Soviet sympathisers, Soviet intelligence could seed university graduates straight into the heart of the British state (see the following section for details).⁴ Declassified British Security Service (MI5) documents from 1940 show clearly that Deutsch’s role as a Soviet intelligence officer was known to British intelligence and the Home Office, but this does not seem to have diminished his results, and, in any case, by this time his most impactful recruits from Cambridge were already serving the KGB (The Soviet Committee for State Security).⁵

Although Oxford was covered by talent spotter Arthur Wynn, he was not nearly as effective as Deutsch and his fellow Soviet intelligence officer, Theodor Maly, as clandestine agent recruiters and handlers.⁶ Deutsch and Maly did operate in Oxford to supplement Wynn, but it appears the lion’s share of their efforts went into handling their Cambridge spies. Finally, the level of commitment of the Cambridge spies themselves was far higher than those who dabbled in the secret world at Oxford. Part of this is attributable to the Cambridge spies as a self-reinforcing social network that was able to provide ideological succour, logistical support, and tradecraft to bridge interruptions in their handling thanks to Stalin’s purges. Indeed, operating as a network benefitted the Cambridge ring in terms of resiliency and motivation. In contrast, the reluctant or brief service of some of the Oxford spies, often working alone, illustrates a level of ambivalence towards their cause, especially upon subsequent reflection later in life, as in the case of Jenifer Hart.

The KGB’s evolving interwar intelligence efforts in the United Kingdom

The end of the First World War did not put a stop to the intelligence gathering activities of the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.⁷ Indeed, the intelligence activities of both Moscow and London did not cease when the guns fell silent. Both nations saw each other as potential adversaries, but the emphasis here is not on the intelligence gathering of the UK, but rather the intelligence gathering against the UK. In fact, the years between 1917 and 1931 witnessed the post-civil war birth and rapid evolution of Soviet intelligence activity against the UK. Despite the raging Russian civil war from 1917 to 1922, the Cheka (a forerunner of the eventual KGB), still managed to carry out foreign intelligence collection in England, evidenced by William Ewer’s subversive work starting in 1919.⁸

Ewer’s group of subversives operated in and about Scotland Yard and British journalism, which effectively put them on the radar of British counter-subversion efforts.⁹ Ewer, along with George Slocombe, Walter Dale, and Arthur Lakey worked within the confines of the British Isles, but Soviet inroads to Britain’s secrets did not end at the country’s boundaries. The Soviet Union found other avenues through which to acquire secret information. For example, in 1924 the OGPU (an evolution of the Cheka) penetrated the British Foreign Service via an Italian messenger, Franceso Constantini.¹⁰ Constantini, with the help of poor security practices at the British Embassy in Rome, passed on hundreds of foreign policy documents to the OGPU and was the basis for the Soviet notion that, ‘England [circa 1925] is now the organising force behind a probable attack on the USSR in the near future’.¹¹ The Soviet Union was pursuing a shadow war with the country it considered its main enemy throughout the 1920s.

However, as the late 1920s became the early 1930s, the international spread of Communism began to be a double-edged sword for Soviet intelligence services. The limited success, and eventual downfall, of Ewer and other agents directly linked to leftist or Communist organisations created the conditions for increased counter-subversion surveillance on these organisations. Christopher Andrew’s Defend the Realm cites a joint report from both MI5 and Special Branch which assessed that the Communist Party of Great British (CPGB), in the event of conflict, would conduct previously planned sabotage in Britain on behalf of Moscow.¹² MI5’s increased surveillance on individuals with Communist connections or leanings thus became problematic for the Soviets. As a result of increased threat appreciation, the most willing British recruits to the Soviet cause were now the most highly scrutinised by the government, thus limiting their utility as secret agents. The Soviets needed a new strategy to identify agents for recruitment.

This new strategy, led by case officer Deutsch and supported by the Moscow Centre (the central headquarters of the KGB, its predecessors, and derivatives), took patience and imagination. It involved ‘the cultivation of young radical high-fliers from leading universities before they entered corridors of power’.¹³ The concept was that as radical students entered leading British universities they could be identified, cultivated, and recruited as agents and, upon graduation, sent out into various positions of power inside the British establishment. As positive or ‘developed vetting’ was not yet employed for establishing suitability for a sensitive position, old school ties, family connections, and clubability substituted for proper background checks. If anyone paused to inquire about their Communist past, it could be plausibly skewed as ‘a passing fancy of youth’.¹⁴ In Maclean’s case it was raised directly at his interview for the Foreign Office in 1935 but his waffling answer—even admitting lingering thoughts—was not seen as prohibitive and became a ‘third secretary in His Majesty’s Diplomatic Service 15 October 1935’.¹⁵ It was precisely this manner of talent spotting that identified the Cambridge Five, but it was the talents and idiosyncrasies of the five and their patrons—and no small measure of luck—that ensured continued trajectory on their Moscow-oriented path. The outspoken Maurice Dobb, the innovative Arnold Deutsch, and the five themselves are a testament to how individual agency and self-reinforcing networks of ideology, rather than other social or structural differences between Cambridge and Oxford, made them successfully develop into a spy ring. Thus, it was in this interwar period that the Soviet intelligence services would lay the foundation for many of the British spy scandals that would be exposed during the Cold War and after. In particular, the continuing functionality and evolution of the KGB’s (and its forerunners) agent recruiting strategy in the 1920s and 1930s would pave the way for a new demographic of Soviet agents: university students with bright futures ahead of them and pasts featuring Communist sympathies that were soon to be left behind, but not always forgotten.

Grappling with an Inquiry into the Secret state

Out of these high-flying elite university students came the most (in)famous the Soviet agents like Harold ‘Kim’ Philby, Donald Maclean, and the rest of the Cambridge spy ring, as well as other various contemporaries from both the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford; however, while the names of the Cambridge spies are bywords for treachery in the English vernacular, the young spies from Oxford have received less academic and popular attention. The conventional assumption is that one group of spies was dramatically exposed, often at particularly fraught episodes during the Cold War after taking part in damaging espionage, while the others remained elusive. Whether that elusiveness is the result of a spy ring that never was caught or of a spy ring that never existed is still debated, but this article seeks to update this debate with the latest declassified files to show that the debate may be nearing its end. While this article cannot be said to be the final word, ultimately, the so-called Cambridge Five have been, and remain, the subject intense study within the realm of political, social, and even military history, whereas spies associated with Oxford, such as Arthur Wynn, Jenifer Hart, and Phoebe Pool have only recently begun to be examined. This legacy of lopsided scrutiny has made direct comparisons difficult, but this article seeks to serve as a partial remedy to this gap.

Like any inquiry into the secret state, methodological challenges abound. It is no different studying clandestine agents recruited out of Oxford given the limited primary sources and secondary literature surrounding their existence. Indeed, while the most satisfying answer to these questions cannot be convincingly uncovered until full archival records from both the United Kingdom and Russia are declassified and available to researchers, waiting for this improbable occurrence risks waiting many lifetimes. Still, there is progress on this front in terms of documentary releases from East and West and there is a way forward, as we shall pursue, that permits an initial hypothesis and assessment of the reasons why the Oxbridge near clones diverge on this issue. There are hints within existing studies of the Cambridge spies that may prove useful in studying the possibility of Oxford spies and this can be synthesised with material recently available on both Cambridge and Oxford spies. As David Dilks and Christopher Andrew observed in The Missing Dimension, ‘historians have a general tendency to pay too much attention to the evidence that survives and make too little allowance for what does not’.¹⁶

Given that research into the secret world can continue despite challenges, we proceed by reviewing and reframing the historiography and relative impact of the Cambridge Five and the Oxford spies. Further, we examine the personalities and conditions that contributed to the KGB’s success in Cambridge and compare the lesser-known intelligence activity at Oxford to that paradigm. This approach will not entirely answer the lingering question of whether Oxford had a spy ring to rival Cambridge, but it can help sharpen the remaining questions, manage historical expectations, and give researchers a plausible roadmap of how to consider intelligence at Oxford if more files become available. In that sense, this article also serves as an interim report on the state of the field with respect to spying in spires.

Oxford versus Cambridge

To recognise and understand why Cambridge has hitherto been the more successful recruitment ground for Soviet intelligence during the interwar period it is necessary to understand a little of the two ancient university cities and the educational system in operation. Before the 19^th century the majority of education, certainly by the time English pupils reached traditional university age, was general in its nature, haphazard for the majority, religious for many, and public for an even smaller number. The English school system, despite contemporaneous parliamentary debates about how education should be non-conformist, remained heavily influenced by religious affiliation and philanthropy.

Schooling was not compulsory after the age of 10 until the late 19^th century.¹⁷ Therefore, the universities of Cambridge and Oxford had developed close affiliations to particular branches of the Church of England which is likely to have shaped which of the two options was chosen by those wishing to progress their education further. It also might offer an explanation as to why so many from particular schools ended up going to the same university, and as is often the case the same college as their school chums. Many viewed a university education as a credentialed grounding in a chosen career path rather than for the pursuit of knowledge. Many of the greats of the British Enlightenment era had found fame (and educated their readers) outside an Oxbridge college. As such, a university education was not a requirement to enter into the higher echelons of British society or the Royal court, but it was necessary to enter the ranks of the higher strata of the civil service.¹⁸

Government refrained from interfering in the affairs of these two university cities; they were free to develop in their own ways, and in part might offer a reason for their parallel religious dispositions as a source of funding, patronage, and pupils. The historian Roy Porter noted that Oxford’s quasi-Jacobite politics had a repellent effect, and Cambridge’s adoption of what was then seen as a modern curriculum of Newtonian science and the supporting mathematics also had an equally potent uninviting quality.¹⁹ Whilst simplistic, Oxford came to be seen as the seat of tradition, Royalism, conservatism (e.g. Oxford has produced more Conservative British Prime Ministers than Cambridge) whereas the slightly younger Cambridge was deemed more modern not just because it was the younger but for its entertaining of ‘new’ ideas, and for not being as wedded to traditional values such as the Court. In addition, the two universities had to start to compete with other establishments that found fame for particular professions, such as Edinburgh’s medical school.

The growth of the British Empire and the need for a larger body of administrators changed only slightly the recruitment practices of the civil service. The pointed Northcote-Trevelyan Report of 1854 was still shaping the civil service the Cambridge Five and other graduates from Oxford would eventually join.²⁰ By 1915 reforms to the civil service had categorised the system into three cohorts: administrators with university educations, senior clerks aged over 18 and junior clerks aged 16.²¹ However, the Foreign Office had different recruitment practices to that of the rest of the system. Maclean and Cairncross in 1935 and 1936, respectively, joined a slightly different system: both had undergone written examinations to enter King Charles Street, and both had been subjected to interview panels to test their skills for life as part of the diplomatic service; they passed these hurdles.²² Graduates would have been subjected to exactly the same exams, and interview boards; thus, by the time a profession as a government administrator was chosen the difference between being from Oxford and Cambridge, on paper at least, was of no concern. By the time, the KGB began to recruit heavily at British universities, Oxford and Cambridge had developed distinct flavours reflective of a political morass in a new century. Perhaps counterintuitively—given the ultimate result—particularly in the pre-World War II era, Oxford’s social and political culture seemed to be more inviting of KGB recruitment; it was more cosmopolitan and held a more ethereal air regarding the sharing of ideas.²³ Hugh Trevor-Roper in The Secret World: Behind the Curtain of British Intelligence in World War II and the Cold War suggests that this brief period of progressiveness in Oxford University was influenced by the ‘unusual alliance of progressive intellectuals and revolutionary trade unionists … in a city such as Oxford’. Cambridge, on the other hand, was more ‘esoteric and intense’ despite having its own radicals.²⁴ These differences suggest that Oxford should have been the recruitment gold mine the KGB was looking for. However, Cambridge and Oxford’s more distant histories may very well have played a part in the KGB finding more success at Cambridge rather than Oxford, as Oxford’s radical political vibrance was waning.²⁵ Meanwhile, Cambridge’s more esoteric atmosphere may have been exactly what the KGB’s recruitment strategy needed to successfully recruit individuals, like the Cambridge Five, who held less obvious affections for Communism.

What is known about Cambridge Five? A look at the literature

While the Oxford riddle remains partially unresolved, it can be said with confidence that the most notable and lasting accomplishment of the KGB’s university recruiting platform came in the form of the Cambridge Five; namely, Harold ‘Kim’ Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross, out of Trinity College. Maclean, the exception, having attended neighbouring Trinity Hall.²⁶ Cairncross has an asterisk by his name, he was not formally recruited by Soviet intelligence until after he had joined the Foreign Office, whereas the others were already well established in their Soviet agent status before they had access to British Government secrets.²⁷ The combined intelligence activities of these five individuals was the most devastating breach in British history. In terms of sheer volume, the ring of five collectively passed thousands of sensitive documents to their Soviet handlers and, in terms of impact, compromised an array of British (and American) endeavours from codebreaking in the Second World War, to Cold War era nuclear breakthroughs, to details of covert operations such as in Albania. The expansiveness, depth, and complexity of the Cambridge Five’s narrative, along with the political and interpersonal ramifications of their treachery, make them a prominent case study for intelligence scholars to this day. Indeed, the magnitude of the Cambridge Five’s penetration of Britain’s highest offices is still being examined by scholars and commentators, spurred on by a steady drip of new file releases, and the Five’s aggregate notoriety is evidenced by the ever-expanding body of literature on the subject. If anything, the scholarly and popular interest in twentieth century spies has been heightened by renewed interest in the themes of secrecy, privacy, and whistleblowing as well as providing a canon or baseline for contested historical comparisons with Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange.²⁸

The literature surrounding the Cambridge Five is often lumped into one of three categories. Books concerning questions examining their motivations, historical interpretation, and humanity, in which authors jockey for the relative importance of the spy typically presented in the form of biography. Journalistic endeavours from the period after the defections and Parliamentary debates throughout the mid to late 20^th century built on an evidence base largely of interviews, and some helpful donations of personal papers from insiders. While the final category places the Five in the broader context of the Cold War, the former two bodies of literature are more plentiful and often less concerned with broader political dynamics than the studies that place the Five within a wider sweep of 20^th century history.²⁹ Nevertheless, all of the above categories are important for details can remain contradictory and the historiography, especially by professional scholars, remains relatively small. The field, however, is growing and is likely to continue to do so as further and further files are released.

Oxbridge intelligence historiography will continue to advance by two main routes: First, personal account of (and scholarly access to) those involved and, second, official declassification in file releases by the British Government to The National Archives (TNA). Authors such as Phillip Knightley wrote their books with extensive access to those that knew Philby or had worked (in a manner of speaking) with Philby. Whereas more recent authors like Stewart Purvis and Calder Walton advanced the historiography on the basis of MI5 file releases primarily, but also an increasing volume of Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) files concerning the investigation into Maclean and Burgess’ dramatic defection. In the case of the Five there are autobiographical accounts from Philby, Cairncross and Blunt upon which to carefully draw, although challenges remain. For instance, Blunt’s is available as an unpublished manuscript at the British Library, rather than an easily available book.³⁰ There is also a growing corpus of literature written by those one step removed from the Five. For instance, Jenny Rees wrote about her father Goronwy’s relationship with Guy Burgess, and Roland Philipps, who noted his grandfather had worked alongside Maclean in Washington, DC³¹ Thus, the historiography of the Cambridge Five and the Oxford spies can be seen as both a chronology of involved figures providing their personal accounts and also as intermittent responses to newly declassified information that updates what researchers can access. There are two further categories of publications that advance knowledge on the Five: those written during the Cold War via investigative journalists for the most part and, as the new world order began to take shape in the 1990s, academic treatments authored, or co-authored, with former Soviet intelligence officers. Given the volume of books, this article does not tackle them all, but seeks to offer a selection of the key texts that advanced knowledge of the Five.

The published autobiographical body of Cambridge Five literature begins with Kim Philby’s 1968 autobiography, My Silent War. However, recently declassified files show that this was not Philby’s first attempt at putting pen to paper with regard to his career and his overlap with Burgess in Washington, DC³² As early as October 1954 the British government was aware that Philby was writing and was formulating a plan to ensure sight of the draft manuscript.³³ Philby thus submitted what he had written in October 1954 for review by his former employer, SIS and others including MI5’s Mr Hill and the Foreign Office.³⁴ My Silent War was published in English in the aftermath of two fairly accurate articles, in Philby’s view, about his espionage career one in the Sunday Times and the other in the Observer. Prior to those articles, Philby sat on his second attempt at an autobiography because it seemed ‘likely to cause a rumpus, with international complications the nature of which was difficult to foresee’.³⁵ Declassified files now offer a slightly different chronology: the Soviets had been offering the My Silent War manuscript around Western publishers for months before one was found.³⁶ But, given that the weight of causing such a disturbance was lifted from his shoulders by newspapers, Philby released his autobiography with the hope of ‘correct[ing] certain inaccuracies and errors of interpretation, and to present a more fully rounded picture’.³⁷ It is probable that the public reaction and interest in the articles might have aided a publisher’s inclination towards taking on the manuscript. Philby presents himself, somewhat predictably, as resolute in his past decisions, while also infusing his account with a tone of seemingly ersatz modesty for the sake of good form.

Philby continued his narrative years later, only months before his death, through a series of interviews with Phillip Knightley, which resulted in the 1989 book The Master Spy: The Story of Kim Philby. The Master Spy expanded upon Philby’s own narrative from two decades prior, to include the notion that the British pushed Philby into defecting to Moscow in an attempt to avoid the embarrassment of arresting him.³⁸ Through Knightley, Philby also asserted that the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) fumbled an operation that would have exposed him years prior to his actual defection,³⁹ likely a KGB-approved dig at American counterintelligence. The sum total of these exposés was Knightley’s conclusion that Philby ‘died happy, fulfilled and unracked by guilt’.⁴⁰ Philby, via his surviving wife, had one final say—part two of The Private Life of Kim Philby The Moscow Years contains previously unpublished chapters, perhaps intended for a sequel to My Silent War.⁴¹ In both his own book and Knightley’s biography, Philby offered a retrospective on the political, economic and military events that transpired during his lifetime, the social relationships he had with those around him, and what ultimately motivated him to serve the Soviet Union.

The next autobiography was by Cairncross’, published by his wife following his death in 1995. In it, he challenged the allegation that he was connected to the other four Cambridge spies, claiming, ‘I had, in effect, recruited myself as an independent and voluntary agent, using the KGB as a channel to the Russians. If I can be defined as a spy, it is only in this solitary case, and it was my contribution of ULTRA [allied wartime signals intelligence codebreaking of German codes] for a period of a year which, I contend, gave meaning to my maintenance of what had begun as a tenuous and unwilling link’.⁴² What Cairncross cannot have known when drafting his autobiography is whether his February 1964 confession to British authorities would ever come to light. In it he makes clear that he was recruited by the known Communist, James Klugman, and spied for the Russians from shortly after he began with the Foreign Office in October 1936 until the defections of Burgess and Maclean on 25 May 1951.⁴³ Cairncross maintained that he was unlike Philby, Maclean, Burgess, and Blunt. His wife, after his death and in the wake of the BBC’s television miniseries ‘Cambridge Spies’, expressed that Cairncross believed that ‘the four’s thirst for power and their anger at the political status quo lay at the roots of their subversion, and motivated them more than any alliance with the anti-fascist cause’.⁴⁴ Cairncross tried to leave the legacy that his hands were far cleaner than those of the other four men and it was via such a notion that the Cambridge Five’s ‘Fifth Man’ sought to distance himself from his contemporaries. This can be judged as an unsuccessful attempt if the popular shorthand ‘Cambridge Five’ is any indication.

Since 2009 Blunt’s autobiography has been available for consultation at the British Library, but government files show the Prime Minister had been made aware of the contents of the manuscript in June 1987: ‘The papers have now been read by the Security Service expert on Blunt’.⁴⁵ There are two versions; the first is largely handwritten, and haphazardly so in places. The second version is typed and has taken on many—but importantly not all—the annotations in the original handwritten version. It is clear from annotations and marginalia that the autobiography was begun, at least in part, as a response to A Climate of Treason. The Times upon the opening of the manuscript notes the text was written after his exposure by Boyle; this tallies with the marginalia, and perhaps offers reason for some of the lengthy rebuttal paragraphs.⁴⁶

Throughout the Cold War, journalists continued to feed the British public’s imagination of the Five’s treacherous activities during the Second World War. It was a growing market and one that produced a number of best-selling books. The veteran journalist Andrew Boyle in The Climate of Treason: Five who Spied for Russia used Blunt’s cryptonym ‘Maurice’ to circumvent UK libel laws in the first published book to focus on Blunt. It became part of the reason for the Prime Minister’s Written Statement⁴⁷ to the House of Commons on 15 November 1979, and the more famous debate in the House of Commons the following week.⁴⁸ The book presented some evidence for the first time possibly because it was guided by ‘former members of the American intelligence community … ’.⁴⁹ The book however, as is the case with many that ostensibly are about a single member of the Five end up straying into discussing the grouping more broadly.

John Costello followed with Mask of Treachery in 1988; with the conclusions being reached ‘after considerable documentary analysis and many hundreds of hours of discussion of my findings with informed opinion on both sides of the Atlantic’.⁵⁰ Costello’s book is another case that claims to be about Blunt but much of the book principally concerns itself with Burgess and Philby and spends more time discussing their careers than it does Blunt’s. The book lists Andrew Lownie as a research assistant (more on this author below). Lownie’s biography on Burgess⁵¹ perhaps draws inspiration for its title from Costello: ‘Blunt was recruited as one of Stalin’s Englishmen’.⁵² 1989 saw the publication of the first book devoted wholly to Donald Maclean. Written by a Maclean’s diplomatic colleague, Robert Cecil, A Divided Life: A Personal Portrait of the Spy Donald Maclean, spans Maclean’s life in an emotionally driven narrative. A Divided Life attempts to uncover the motivations for Maclean’s spying. The book, rich in detail and strains of romanticism, portrays Maclean at the end of his life as a shattered idealist whose youthful fantasies never bloomed as intended. Cecil’s account notes the irony that that Donald Maclean had made a long journey through Marxism-Leninism and his defection to the Soviet Union only to be buried in English soil.⁵³ Cecil in his retirement from the Foreign Office contributed to the leading journal of the field where Philby was a more frequent subject matter than Maclean, that although mostly associated with Maclean it is important to remember that Cecil came to pass himself off as a leading authority on the members of the Five more broadly.⁵⁴

After the Cold War ended, more voices continued to advance the narrative that the Five were relatable ideologues rather than traitors. Chief amongst such offerings, Yuri Modin’s My Five Cambridge Friends (1994) recounts the significant work his agents performed on behalf of the Soviet Union. More than just a Soviet perspective, this account views the Five through the eyes of a man who worked closely with them professionally. Modin’s final chapter ‘Three Soviet Citizens’ gets to the heart of the matter: ‘[t]he British have a preconceived view of the Five’ and goes on to defend the Five as patriotic ideologues and ‘true revolutionaries’ who never considered that they were betraying Britain.⁵⁵ In hindsight, Modin characterises his five Cambridge friends as ‘Don Quixote figures who spent their lives tilting at windmills, while history was inexorably destroying their ideals’.⁵⁶ Through one Cold Warrior’s eyes, the Five were victims of history unable to attain an ideal to which they remained forever committed. Modin notes that he had no meetings with Maclean when Modin was working in the UK; thus, some of the claims of intimate knowledge of the Five and their rational for espionage need to be read with this in mind.⁵⁷

The end of the Cold War and the dawn of the 21^st century saw no attenuation in popular interest in the Cambridge spies. In 2001, Miranda Carter shed light on yet another Cambridge spy in Anthony Blunt: His Lives, examining Blunt’s early childhood experiences in public school and his homosexuality as evidence that he often existed on the margins of society. Carter breaks down the ‘caricature’ of Blunt⁵⁸ and examines the intellectual in the social context of Great Depression-era Britain; a time of upheaval in which some intellectuals turned to Communism as the answer to the United Kingdom’s economic and social woes.⁵⁹ While more evolutionary than revolutionary in her conclusions, His Lives once more portrays a member of the Cambridge Five as a human product of his time. Carter makes no mention of the Blunt manuscript, despite its existence being noted in the footnotes to Costello’s much earlier book; in fact, Carter’s book remains the last time Blunt was the focus of a detail study of his life and career. Carter’s book was followed in 2015 by Andrew Lownie’s Stalin’s Englishman, which brings Burgess to the forefront of the ring of five, claiming that Burgess was ‘the leader of the group and held it together’.⁶⁰ His central argument is that Burgess is overlooked in terms of significance, and that the book was ‘… therefore the first authoritative life of Burgess’.⁶¹ Lownie argues that other members of the ring, Philby in particular, would not have been able to get their professional appointments without the intervention by Burgess; he highlights Burgess’s likeability in spite of his aggressive homosexuality (in the context of his times) and unkempt appearance. Stalin’s Englishman pushes for recognition of Burgess as the most important of the Five. Lownie’s book is bolstered by the more recent Guy Burgess: The Spy Who Knew Everyone (2016) by Stewart Purvis and Jeff Hulbert, which echoes Lownie’s argument that Burgess was the true leader of the Five, rather than Philby as is commonly assumed, via the most recent archival documents release from MI5 and a lost audio recording which the authors recovered.

The publisher Roland Philipps is the grandson of Roger Makins, who had been Maclean’s senior at the British Embassy in Washington. Philipps began his biography of Maclean in part due to the watershed 2015 TNA file release with over 400 files related to Burgess and Maclean being deposited at Kew.⁶² The book is unusual though as it discusses the relationships Maclean had with his various handlers throughout his Soviet career, something almost all other Western authored books fail to do.⁶³ This unusual line of argument is throughout: ‘… Maclean dropped his stoic British mask and sent an eloquent and assertive letter to Moscow that was a plea to be made useful again …’.⁶⁴ The book also notes, although only briefly, the propaganda angle that these Five have: “[t]he Soviet Union kept its secrets secure until once again Donald Maclean could be useful to the Kremlin.

The social perspective motivates the newest take on Philby’s career, Ben Macintyre’s A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal (2014), which views Philby’s life of betrayal through his friend and erstwhile SIS colleague, Nicholas Elliot, and paints a psychological portrait of Philby while tackling the topic of class in mid-20^th century Britain. The book also capitalises on the MI5 file releases of the first decade of the 21^st century, which other authors could not consult. This particular prism of explaining Philby’s actions has been picked up by the UK television channel ITV, and played across screens in December 2022: it is probable that this will result in renewed interest in Philby and other Soviet spies of the same era, feeding the same fascination until the nearly 90^th anniversary of their arrival in Cambridge.

Thus, from 1968 until the present, authors have continued to contest the history of the Cambridge Five, their motivations, and their individual importance. A few books stray from individualising the Cambridge Five (My Five Cambridge Friends, Deceiving the Deceivers, The Cambridge Spies: The Untold Story of Maclean, Philby, and Burgess in America) but most of the literature attempts to treats specific spies but as Costello and Boyle show the lives of the Five are so intertwined that complete isolation and focus is wrought with difficulty.⁶⁵ A few select books place the Cambridge Five narrative into the greater context of the Cold War and the Soviet and British security apparatuses. The first, KGB: The Inside Story (1990) by Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky places the Five within the history of the KGB. The book is valuable for many reasons, but high in that list is that it was the first time Cairncross was added to the grouping, and his significance as a Soviet agent established.⁶⁶ Despite being a seminal book it did not actually provide a great deal of new information speaking to the day-to-day work of the Five, but in one regard it confirmed that the skill investigative work carried out during the Cold War by a cadre of journalists had in fact correctly pieced together the vast majority of the careers of the Five.

Andrew’s other book on the KGB, The Sword and The Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB expands upon that original history with more recent documents. Written with British Ministerial approval,⁶⁷ Andrew and former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, collaborated to produce a stunning insider’s account ‘ … to expose the record of the KGB’.⁶⁸ Mitrokhin’s archive, based upon clandestine handwritten notes amassed over years gives phenomenal insight into the KGB and its precursor organisations from 1917 to 1984.⁶⁹ Given the volume of material, and the number of years that the book covers only a small fraction discusses the careers of the Cambridge Five. Philby in particular features throughout as a benchmark for treachery. For instance, the comparison: ‘By 1958 [Heinz] Felfe had established himself as the German Philby … ’⁷⁰ once again reinforcing familiarity of Philby’s exploits and prowess. Cairncross is also afforded this benchmark treatment when discussing the Soviet penetration of GCHQ, Geoffrey Prime: ‘Early in 1968 the KGB achieved its most important penetration of British SIGINT [signals intelligence] operations since John Cairncross had entered Bletchley Park in 1942’.⁷¹ Not only does Andrew place the Cambridge Five in the history of the Cold War-era KGB, but he also places the spies within the official British account of the Security Service, Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5. Combined, all three books characterise the importance of Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt, and Cairncross in the intelligence histories of both the then Soviet Union and the United Kingdom. Andrew’s insertion of the Cambridge Five into ‘the missing dimension’ reveals some of the most consequential spies in history.

There is one final aspect of publications about the Five that needs to be recognised. The Soviet media capitalised on the Five throughout the Cold War, often with little advanced fanfare but huge helpings of secrecy, having rightly noted the interest of the British public and using this to their advantage; 12 February 1956 less than 4 months after the infamous White paper was published, a select group of Western journalists were summoned to Room 101 of the National Hotel for a brief statement by Maclean and Burgess.⁷² Whilst it is not possible from sources thus far released from former Soviet archives to know if this press conference was a tit-for-tat move, it was the first sighting of the two former diplomats in person in nearly 5 years, organised with great secrecy, and ensured more column inches were filed for a hungry Western audience perpetuating the interest. Russian readers are likely to have had difficulty in comprehending the significance of the stories about a press conference as very little had appeared in the Soviet press about the defection of Burgess and Maclean.⁷³ Illustrating that at some level there was a strategy of using the five in international propaganda but not in a domestic setting. What is now clear is that less than 6 months after this now infamous press conference, the first biography of Burgess, Guy Burgess: A Portrait with Background was published by the Labour Party’s Tom Driberg. It was revealed through the Mitrokhin archive that Driberg was a Soviet agent, and for a time educated at the University of Oxford, and that the manuscript ‘ … had been carefully vetted by the KGB’.⁷⁴ This serves as an important reminder that there was a KGB strategy to use the Five as Cold War propaganda tools in Western capitals.

What is known about Oxford spies? A look at the literature

In contrast to the rather lengthy literature about Cambridge spies, the literature surrounding the pre-war Oxford spies is scant. One plausible way to account for the gap in Oxford spy accounts is a lack of publicly released documents from both the United Kingdom and the former Soviet Union and a lack of a commercial market for the literature. The logic is circular as there are few books because there is little source material and little commercial interest due to a lack of a demonstrated market. But it is likely also the case that there are simply no more bombshell files. Indeed, it beggars belief that MI5 would be more forthcoming regarding Cambridge spies, but retain files on Oxford spies. Likewise, aside from contributions from Nigel West, Oleg Tsarev, and, more dubiously, Peter Wright, secondary literature on the Oxford spies is underdeveloped. Only a few biographies about some Oxford spies exist, complemented by few articles written on the topic. Out of the following names most often raised in the context of an Oxford spy ring: Arthur Wynn, Jenifer Hart, Bernard and Peter Floud, Bob Stewart, Iris Murdoch, Tom Driberg, and Phoebe Pool, only Hart wrote an autobiography.⁷⁵

Indeed, the lack of a post-exposure justification memoir on the part of those associated with Oxford has stunted the literature. Compounding the gap is the relative paucity of defector accounts regarding Oxford spies, and, the simplest explanation—that there aren’t many—may be the best one. While accounting for bias and alert for propaganda, intelligence historians must rely to some extent on the admissions of defectors. Victor Oshchenko confirmed Michael Smith’s involvement with the KGB, Walter Krivitsky identified Theodore Maly and Arnold Deutsch, and other defectors have relayed information to similar effects.⁷⁶ Even when defectors lack specific intelligence regarding certain people or groups, general acknowledgement of such items often abound in their statements. For example, the defector Anatoli Golitsyn did not have specific information on the Cambridge Five, but he was able to identify the ring’s value to Moscow.⁷⁷ The relatively long line of KGB defectors, foundational for much insight surrounding Soviet intentions towards British academia, is silent on the efficacy of KGB efforts at Oxford. This absence of foundational evidence, whether due to a lack of access on the part of the defectors or a lack meaningful information regarding Oxford spies, seems to support the notion that if the Oxford spies had a collective critical mass worth noting, prominent defectors would have mentioned it.

Consideration of an Oxford spy network saw a controversial birth in 1987 with former MI5 officer Peter Wright’s explosive (and embellished) autobiography, Spycatcher. Wright remains a problematic source for historians, and famous for the fact that the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tried, and failed, to ban his book. The files related to the court case held by Government remain retained: however, some files related to this book are available to researchers.⁷⁸ Wright wrote Spycatcher with the apparent intent to bring the Soviet penetration of the British security services to the forefront of public attention—even if doing so meant a violation of the Official Secrets Act. Wright claimed that the first hints at an Oxford network began with Anthony Blunt’s confession in 1964 and from there Wright considers various personalities all tied to Soviet espionage in one way or another—or so he claimed.⁷⁹ At best—and despite its many faults – Spycatcher is the genesis of the scarce literature surrounding the Oxford spies in their own right, but, aside from Hart, they have not shaped their own narrative or been the subject of journalistic or academic interest like their Cambridge counterparts.

Jenifer Hart’s 1998 autobiography, Ask Me No More, is a subtle but outright denial of her alleged espionage activities embedded within a narrative arc of her life, and she is an ideal of example of the ambivalence towards clandestine Soviet service at Oxford. Hart explained her reasons for becoming part of the Communist party, including emotional and personal motivations, and then recalled how both an Englishman (probably Arthur Wynn) and a ‘foreigner’ (the latter now identified as Arnold Deutsch) attempted to recruit her as a Soviet agent.⁸⁰ Hart later claimed that she became uncomfortable with her secret meetings after the novelty of cloak-and-dagger meetings wore off and after Deutsch enquired into her personal life, which she was not prepared to talk about.⁸¹ This ambivalence is never shown amongst the Cambridge spies. Hart does not anchor her memoir around her meetings with Soviet handlers—to do so might seem defensive. In Ask Me No More, she merely takes a passing glance at her time as a potential spy, denies it, and moves on with her narrative. Given her diminution of her actions, instead of justification for them, Ask Me No More is the pusillanimous counterpoint to the full-throated personal defence offered by Philby. As Nigel West noted, her account flirts with accordance with Peter Wright’s claims about her pre-war activities but seems selectively forgetful at the coalface of espionage.⁸²

The remainder of the Oxford spy literature consists of offerings that are largely responses to information slowly being declassified about potential Oxford spies. In the mid-1990s, a brief glimpse into Soviet archives offered by Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev gave the tantalising clue that a promising KGB agent called ‘Scott’ was active in pre-war Oxford.⁸³ In 2009, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev ascertained that agent Scott was Arthur Wynn, who was at one time a talent spotter for the KGB at Oxford.⁸⁴ Wynn was first identified in Oxford by Edith Tudor-Hart and formally recruited by Theodore Maly, eventually providing a substantial 25 Oxford-based recruitment leads to Maly. Wynn was not the only one trying to develop a spy ring for the communist cause at Oxford. In fact, it was Bernard Floud who first suggested to then-Jenifer Fischer Williams (the maiden name of Jenifer Hart) that she should join the civil service on behalf of the British Communist Party and he brokered her first meeting with ‘Otto’ (Arnold Deutsch).⁸⁵ One possible rationale not often explored is that MI5 had a preference for recruiting women from particular Oxford and University of London colleges, and that perhaps an unhelpful tendency to focus on the exploits of their male counterparts is one possible reason why no Oxford spy ring has been found to date.⁸⁶

In terms of impact, intelligence historian Calder Walton notes some near misses (from the British perspective) that would have been valuable intelligence opportunities from the Soviet perspective, had the KGB’s Oxford recruits capitalised upon them, but ultimately concludes ‘at present, then, it is impossible to say whether there was a successful Soviet spy network in Oxford like there was in Cambridge’ because, of course, KGB interest and efforts do not equal outcomes. Identifications of agents like Arthur Wynn as Scott advances the body of knowledge surrounding the Oxford spies, but reveals little about their impact. It does, however, reinforce this article’s view that Cambridge had the right conditions in the 1930s to transform left-leaning students into spies because Wynn himself was a product of Trinity College, Cambridge, like four of the Cambridge Five, before moving to Oxford for postgraduate work.

The newest contribution regarding spies from Oxford, published in February 2018, reveals that David Floyd, a British diplomat, spied for the Soviets during the Second World War after his time at Oxford.⁸⁷ Similar to Anthony Blunt, evidence suggests that Floyd struck a deal with the British security service to keep his reputation intact and, unlike Blunt, Floyd’s reputation stayed that way until recently.⁸⁸ But, like the identification of Wynn as Scott, Floyd and the articles about him seem to offer only more tantalising questions than answers. Even if there was not cohesive network at Oxford, there were certainly Soviet spies.

Spark, development, and direction for university spies: the agency of individuals

Maurice Dobb, by dint of his outspoken Marxism at Cambridge in the 1930s, became an integral part of the Cambridge Five’s birth. Over the course of his career, Dobb groomed and galvanised Kim Philby, and jump started his espionage career. Dobb, a Communist economist at Cambridge in the 1920s and 1930s, was one of the leading Marxist intellectuals in Britain, and was the author of various pieces of literature involving Marxist economics.⁸⁹ During the interwar period and after, we now know from declassified Security Service files, MI5 conducted extensive surveillance on Dobb and investigated his connections to Communists—far more than other intellectual figures at Cambridge, although several leading lights saw Communism as a solution to social woes in the midst of the Great Depression.⁹⁰ It was his intellectual commitment to Communism, coupled with his actual personal connections to Pyotr Kapista, Arthur Wynn, and Willi Munzenberg’s World Committee for the Assistance of Victims of German Fascism, that have caused some to speculate either he was working as a talent-spotter or a recruiter for the Comintern.⁹¹

Yuri Modin credited ‘Dobb’s gifts as a political speaker [which] intrigued Philby … . Philby gradually absorbed more and more of Dobb’s ideas’.⁹² Thus, a measure of Philby’s political and economic views can be attributed to Dobb’s influence at an impressionable time in Philby’s intellectual development. Dobb was in a mentorship position and Philby, given his youth and ideological and political wonderings, was in a position to be influenced. Had Dobb not been a part of Philby’s life, it is uncertain if the young spy would have continued down his path to espionage. Indeed, had Dobb been merely a quiet Communist sympathiser, Philby might have lacked the inspiration, confidence and contacts necessary to find his way into the Communist orbit. Dobb’s influence on Philby did not just stay in the realm of inspiration and galvanisation. When Philby sought to do more for the Communist cause, Dobb directed him to the World Committee for the Assistance of Victims of German Fascism in Paris, a group whose founder had ties to NKVD recruiters.⁹³ From Paris, Philby moved on to work with activists in Vienna and soon found his way into what might termed ‘sub-rosa activism’. Regardless of the extent to which Dobb directly connected Philby with Soviet intelligence, he was a key figure in providing Philby with contacts and also radicalising Philby’s world view, which ultimately drove him to spy for Moscow.

The comparison regarding a spark at Cambridge and Oxford is simple, but telling. Where Maurice Dobb was the Communist spark for the most notorious Cambridge spy, there is no evidence of a similar figure at Oxford. Our research reveals no comparable ‘Dobbian’ personality at Oxford, and MI5 seemed unaware of any, despite energetic investigation into Communist intellectuals. In MI5’s files on Dobb, a collection of countless surveillance reports and copies of Dobb’s letters, there is scant mention of Oxford intellectuals who were as ideologically committed or willing to enable their students to take the next step. One of the more common names in the Security Service’s files is one Beryl Smalley, an Oxford history tutor, but her connections to Communism and Socialism were marginal and did not match the outspoken vigour of Dobb.⁹⁴ This lack of an inspirational academic force at Oxford could imply that there was not the same level of galvanisation in young undergraduates at Oxford that there was at Cambridge. This concept suggests a lack of ideological centralisation (in the form of one person) and publicly visible, intellectually driven Communism at Oxford that Cambridge had via Dobb. This centralisation was important in Cambridge. The locus of Communist thought centred on their meetings at Dobb’s home, locally known as ‘The Red House’. No such locus existed to anchor, nurture, direct, or connect what might be conceived as the Oxford counterpart of Philby.

The role of early KGB controllers Deutsch and Maly

Even if a locus of communist intellectual activity had existed in Oxford, a network of spies could never be complete without an actual handler (or handlers given Stalin’s penchant for recalling individuals from overseas to be purged). That role is far more complex than has previously been detailed and is now possible to explore due to declassified files, principally those from MI5. Previously, control of the Five has been seen as linear and permanent: Arnold Deutsch acted as their first controller, succeeded by Theodore Maly, but it is now possible to correct this long held belief.

Deutsch was of Czech nationality but was raised as an Austrian Jew. Deutsch eventually became ‘blinded’ by the Comintern’s vision for a new world, which led him on a journey that included the Comintern’s international liaison department (OMS), the sex-pol movement, and OPGU training to work as an illegal.⁹⁵ His colleague, Maly, a one-time Hungarian priest known for his uncommonly tall height, also worked as an illegal after breaking with his pastoral past upon seeing the horrors of the First World War.⁹⁶ It was in their ‘illegal’ (meaning not using official Soviet cover) capacity that Deutsch and Maly handled the group of spies that would make them notable in intelligence history, but it was Deutsch’s recruitment strategy, academic background and personality, alongside Maly’s avuncular disposition and steady hand, that allowed for the ideal conditions in which the Cambridge Five could flourish.

As noted, the idea of recruiting university students was the brainchild of Deutsch and Moscow.⁹⁷ His academic background likely affected this strategy, since, in only five years, Deutch earned a PhD with distinction in chemistry from Vienna University. When Deutsch arrived in England in 1934, his academic credentials allowed him to conduct postgraduate work at the University of London that would offer cover for his status in England without taxing his time too much.⁹⁸ Not only did Deutsch’s elite education place him in league with the agents he would eventually supervise, but also it gave him the unique opportunity to observe British university life from the inside. From London he wrote to the Centre explaining his strategy:

Given the Communist movement in these [British] universities is on a mass scale and that there is a constant turnover of students, it follows that individual Communists whom will pluck out of the Party will pass unnoticed, both by the Party itself and by the outside world. People forget about them. And if at some time they do remember that they were once Communists, this will be put down to a passing fantasy of youth, especially as those concerned are scions of the bourgeoisie. It is up to us to give the individual [recruit] a new non-Communist political personality.⁹⁹

Deutsch advocated for the utilisation of university students who could deny their pasts once they reached influential positions. By cutting public ties with Communist organisations, those recruits would draw less scrutiny and burrow further into the British establishment. Deutsch’s recruitment strategy operationalised Dobb’s intellectual cornerstone and was the key to unlocking the intelligence potential of the Cambridge Five. Dobb, of course, was not the only Marxist intellectual in England and Deutsch’s strategy was not solely a function of Dobb’s influence. Deutsch recruited 20 individuals to the Soviet cause (out of the 29 he made contact with).¹⁰⁰ It was Deutsch’s personal foresight and innovative recruitment plan, rather than the current trends of Communist fervour in university populations, that set the conditions for the Five’s future espionage. Had Deutsch followed more conventional, or predicable, avenues and scouted for talent within the CPGB, the rising stars of Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt, and Cairncross might not have been recruited, at least not then and there.

Deutsch’s interpersonal demeanour, like Maly’s, eased the concerns of choosing a life of espionage while building trust with his impressionable and eager agents. These ‘soft skills’ should not be underestimated. Intelligence veteran Joseph W. Wippl has identified the traits that, in his view, make a case officer (of any country) ‘great’. Wippl cites six different concepts that make a great case officer; three of which apply directly to Deutsch and Maly. They are a genial disposition that involves a combination of likeability, charm, humour, and openness that engenders trust, a sixth sense of what people want, which can initiate trust with others almost immediately, and the ability to exercise selectivity and patience.¹⁰¹ Philby remembered Deutsch as ‘simply marvellous … He looked at you as if nothing more important in life than you and talking to you existed in that moment … And he had a marvellous sense of humour’.¹⁰² Theodore Maly seemed to have much of the same demeanour. Though MI5 files shed little clear light on the subject, Abram Slutsky, the head of the INO (the NKVD’s foreign intelligence arm) at the time of Maly’s work, attributed Maly’s skill and success to his charm and tact. Maly also emanated a sense of vulnerability, which endeared agents to him.¹⁰³

Both men also ran agents like Philby and Burgess with a keen understanding of what motivated them. Deutsch was careful to understand and be patient with each of his agents. With Philby, Deutsch understood that he could not be pushed prematurely and that his usefulness would only come with time. Deutsch exhibits the same patience with Maclean when he allowed Maclean to be a sleeper agent until he was in a position to access sensitive information.¹⁰⁴ In handling the Five, both Deutsch and Maly adhered to many of the attributes that make a great case officer—and their results stunned Britain and the West when they came to light. For this article, such prodigious results make the notion that Deutsch and Maly were also recruiting at Oxford all the more imperative. Deutsch and Maly’s efforts at Oxford were limited in comparison to Cambridge, but there is evidence of some short-lived meetings between Jenifer Hart and Deutsch that represent at least the seeds of intelligence activity at Oxford that did not bloom as in Cambridge.¹⁰⁵ That Hart appears to have stopped her meetings with Deutsch indicates her low level of commitment both to the cause and to Deutsch personally, who was viewed by the Cambridge spies with esteem and loyalty.

While Hart’s commitment to the cause fell short of Deutsch’s expectations, the relatively recent unmasking of Arthur Wynn as agent Scott may provide some validation the efficacy of Deutsch’s recruitment strategy at Oxford. Identified in 2009 by Alexander Valliliev via rare access to KGB files, Arthur Wynn was a talent spotter for the KGB at Oxford following his undergraduate work at Cambridge in the 1930s, and Wright claimed he was Hart’s controller for a time.¹⁰⁶ Recruited by Maly and Edith Tudor-Hart, Wynn was touted by Hart as ‘a second Sohnchen [the codename for Philby, recruited a few years earlier] who, in all probabilities, offers even greater possibilities than the first’.¹⁰⁷ It is clear, however, that Wynn was not as successful as someone dubbed a ‘second Sohnchen’ should have been.

In contrast to Deutsch and Maly, who seemed aptly selective with which agents they chose to focus their efforts, Wynn, although he attempted to recruit 25 potential agents, five of which were highly suitable, was ‘criticised by Moscow for providing too many names of known Communists, who would inevitably attract security attention, and thus not be suitable as Soviet penetration agents’.¹⁰⁸ Whether or not he was aware of Deutsch’s strategy to collect recruits who could easily sever ties to Communism, Wynn seemed overzealous and inefficient with his recruiting, to say nothing of the operational security problems of potentially being known by too many people as the Centre’s agent spotter. Moscow insisted he be more ‘selective’ and wrote that they were concerned about agent Scott’s activity, as it was primarily based on the recruitment of overt communists. Moscow insisted that ‘there should be no mass recruitment [of Communist Party members]’.¹⁰⁹ That Moscow remonstrated with Wynn’s lack of selectivity, especially compared with Deutsch, indicates a lack of efficient agent recruitment at Oxford.

Wynn’s lack of focus and apparent scattershot approach in Oxford begs the question of how well he was cultivating those select targets that might have proven more useful than others, and, crucially, if his network extended to anyone who wasn’t already a known communist. Despite the Cambridge spies conducting their work with a degree of autonomy, the available evidence suggests that not even the talented and innovative Deutsch could keep one eye on Oxford and the other firmly set on his golden geese in Cambridge. Christopher Andrew suggests that it was simply luck that Deutsch became preoccupied with Philby at Cambridge, and this observation becomes more consequential in the context of Deutsch’s time.¹¹⁰ Had Deutsch tried to split himself between Cambridge and Oxford at the time of Philby’s advent, it may have been the case that Philby himself might not have been given proper attention; that is to say, he could have been sparked by Dobb, but with no fuse laid by Deutsch. In light of what has already been noted about Wynn’s peripatetic recruitment efforts, it seems unlikely that Wynn could cultivate an effective spy ring if he was fishing in the wrong pond with the wrong bait. The efflux of this is likely continued disappointment for those historians holding out for the explosive unveiling of a heretofore unknown group of Oxford spies.

Social connections are the espionage ties that bind

As noted, a spy ring involves a self-reinforcing network, and social connections between the Cambridge Five and the Oxford spies account for a great deal of the discrepancy in Soviet success in the great universities. The Cambridge Five were familiar with one another and in some cases particularly close friends. A double-edged sword, this familiarity allowed Moscow to facilitate recruitment and handing of the ring and to circumnavigate the tradecraft effects of Stalin’s purges, to some extent. However, it also led to the unravelling of the spy ring after the defections of Burgess and Maclean in 1951. This highly aware, social, and nodal dynamic is not similarly expressed in the available evidence about the Oxford spies. Having known each other through Cambridge’s communist social clubs or activities and academic pursuits around Cambridge, the Five essentially informally identified one another for formal recruitment without much trouble—the Five shared the many of the same friends, ran in the same circles, and also perhaps shared subagents.¹¹¹ To begin, Philby was recruited by Deutsch and then Deutsch asked Philby if he knew of any other people willing to join the cause. In turn, Philby pointed Deutsch in the direction of Burgess and Maclean, who signed on.¹¹² Subsequently, Maclean pointed the KGB towards Anthony Blunt, who then offered up the name of a former pupil, John Cairncross—the end result of this process was the ring as we know it.¹¹³ A socially reserved nature did not characterise most of the Five and such enthusiastic shared experience across the group allowed the connections between them to flourish into professional espionage. The close and heavily interconnected nature of the Five, especially the nearness of Philby and Burgess, allowed for a close ring of spies.

Despite running counter to the eventual ‘textbook’ British Special Operations Executive espionage tactics in terms of ‘proper’ security from a British perspective, there is substantial evidence of both the positive and negative sides of this type of relationship network.¹¹⁴ As detailed above, the Five are seen as a spy ring, a collective working to support one another, but it was Moscow’s paranoid suspicion of them in 1942 that finally combines them as a quint once and for all.¹¹⁵ (It is also the book dust jackets of the 1990s with images of all Five members that firmly ensconces this spy group in the minds of the public.) This type of agent network allowed for the Five’s recruitment and group camaraderie, and it also allowed some of the Five to circumnavigate a series of less talented handlers—in their eyes—in the midst of Stalin’s purges. Philby himself grew bothered by his handler in 1948–1949 and refused to work through the Soviet embassy.¹¹⁶ As a work around, Philby sent his correspondence through Burgess, who then passed his information off to the Soviets. Without Burgess as an intermediary, it is uncertain what might have happened to the information he acquired, if he was forced through channels ravaged by Stalin’s paranoia. The use of each other as messengers—a key benefit of a ring—was not a singular event as Burgess once passed messages to the Soviets through Blunt.¹¹⁷ These messengers reveal the awareness and sensitivity of each member of the ring in their work for their cause. Deutsch, though he preferred to work with agents individually as ideal tradecraft would suggest, noted that Guy Burgess thought of himself as on a team, rather than a lone wolf.¹¹⁸ Other instances of close cooperation between portions of the Five include general bonhomie. For instance, Philby once housed Burgess in his home and they socialised when conventional tradecraft would have counselled distance. They covered for each other as well. Blunt attempted to clear Burgess’ flat of incriminating evidence of espionage after he defected.

The speed at which the network unravelled, however, is a testament to the dangers of having such a closely intertwined group.¹¹⁹ As the net closed around Maclean as a result of the VENONA signals intelligence decrypts in 1944, the closeness of the Five soon became a disadvantage.¹²⁰ Blunt, visibly concerned, expressed to Modin that, given Maclean’s mental state, he would break under questioning and take the others down with him.¹²¹ Had Maclean not known about other members of the ring, his outing would have had less of a ripple effect on the other members. Burgess actually used his friendship with Philby as an excuse for not initially wanting to go to the Soviet Union with Maclean. Burgess stated that he had given Philby his word that he would not defect with Maclean, given the fact that such a defection on his part, in combination with his known closeness with Philby, would cast suspicion on his friend. Burgess did wind up in Moscow and Philby, much to his consternation as revealed in his autobiography, predictably was placed under suspicion by MI5.¹²² The doubts about Philby’s loyalty were too much for SIS (and the Americans) to bear, even if no legal charge was levelled at the time. Thus, were any Oxford spies known to each other—or facilitated by each other—a thread that revealed one could eventually unmask them all.

The known Oxford spies: Arthur Wynn, Peter and Bernard Floud, Jenifer Hart, and Phoebe Pool, unlike their Cambridge counterparts, do not seem to have run in the same social circles as each other after university, although all had been part of the left-wing dining club at Oxford called the Clarendon. Further, there is no evidence that ties them to each other outside of the message passing.¹²³ Peter Wright briefly described their professional connections: Phoebe Pool ran messages for Anthony Blunt and also ran messages for Deutsch intended for the Floud brothers, while Jenifer Hart, recruited by Bernard Floud, met Deutsch clandestinely, albeit briefly, and could recognise a photo of Arthur Wynn as her controller.¹²⁴ Little else is known about the Oxford spies’ relationships with one another. Less contact between these agents may imply a more secure spy ring, in the increasingly unlikely event that a coherently structured network of spies were functioning out of Oxford. Should one person in a network of individual nodes have been compromised, the others would have less to fear from MI5 interrogation due to a lack of knowledge regarding their peer’s activities and a lack of overt social connections would avoid uncomfortable questions, such as those that compromised close friends Philby and Burgess. Given the ease which the Cambridge Five informally recruited one another, it is possible, but not probable, that any spies out of Oxford may have had a slower growing but more secure network.

Conclusion: no other shoe to drop

As we have shown, the recently declassified files—particularly from the Security Service—and the state of the intelligence history literature more generally suggest that those who are waiting for an explosive revelation about a long-hidden Oxford spy ring to rival the Cambridge Five are likely to be disappointed. Although comparable in so many regards, we must conclude that Oxford and Cambridge differed most of all in their production of a self-reinforcing ring of traitors to the British state. In short, while we now know there were Soviet efforts at Oxford as part of their overall strategy towards penetrating the British establishment via recruiting elite university students, and this did result in a number of Oxford spies, the Cambridge spy ring remains—by a wide margin—the more historically consequential.

We have attributed this increasingly clear discrepancy to many factors, but principally the role of individual agency. Specifically, the individual actions of Maurice Dobb, Arnold Deutsch, Theodore Maly, and the Cambridge Five themselves helped create the spy ring that, despite eventually being caught, was wildly successful during the Second World War and into the early Cold War. Maurice Dobb served as an intellectual lodestar and galvanising force for the impressionable undergraduates, Deutsch and Maly ably served as handlers, and the Five themselves created and cultivated the social ties between them that formed the backbone of their support structure, and at times their conduit for passing intelligence to Moscow. While not perfectly parallel, the success of the Five, as determined by the actions of individuals and in the context of 1930s Britain, is useful in examining the information currently available about the Oxford spies who lacked a centrally galvanising figure outside of the KGB, lacked sensitive and creative cultivation by Wynn, and who were more disassociated from one another than the Cambridge Five had been. The success of the Cambridge Five is the zenith of espionage success in the context of 1930s British universities and thus provides both paradigm and foil for examining the dwindling potential for new revelations about a possible Oxford spy ring.

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).

Additional information

Funding

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

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.