Antonia Senior – The Cambridge Five and the Making of The Soviet Empire

Why did five gilded, charming men, blessed with brains, beauty, and opportunity, choose to betray their country? During their time at Cambridge University in the 1930s, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, John Cairncross and Keeper of the Queen's Pictures Anthony Blunt undertook a clandestine regime to supply British and US intelligence material to the Soviets. Thanks to his Cambridge spies, until the implosion of the spy ring in May 1951, there was barely a secret, and barely a decision made that Stalin did not know about. Using recently declassified files, Antonia Senior will explore how The Five became tools in Stalin's imperial scheme, and responsible– directly and indirectly– for the deaths of thousands of men and women fighting against Soviet domination. Antonia will also uncover how The Five were shielded by the British establishment, exposed as much by their own incompetence as by forensic investigation.

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