I must confess to a bit of a blind spot when it comes to understanding the apparently enduring – if the appearance of yet another documentary about them in the year of our Lord 2023 is anything to go by – appeal of the Cambridge Four. The great unmasking of Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt as Soviet agents took place largely in the 50s and 60s, and the last of them died in 1988. To those born after the event, it feels like ancient and baffling history, the fundamentals of which are easy to grasp (bunch of pricks get enamoured of communism at university, fail to grow out of it, betray their country but are surrounded by enough similar pricks to escape due censure) and so dispiriting that most of us prefer to turn away and concentrate on the many better things in life instead. But to a certain demographic (the prick-adjacent? The namelessly frustrated who dream of doing something as big, as disruptive as selling big, disruptive secrets to the Russians instead of distributing memes on the internet?) they remain entrancing. Like a Bloomsbury set for centrist dads.
But this demographic is surely ageing. A new audience must be found, the prickish torch passed! And so to The Real Spies Among Friends, an hour-long documentary narrated by who else but that master of prickish characters Roger Allam. It is a companion piece to the drama series A Spy Among Friends, which centres round Guy Pearce as Kim Philby and Damian Lewis as Nicholas Elliott – the former’s best friend who believed in his innocence so deeply that he actually brought him back into MI6 even after it was, uh, pretty clear he helped Maclean and Burgess defect to Moscow just before they were due to be arrested for handing over literal suitcasefuls of top-secret secrets to the Russians since about 1940.
Now, someone seems to have noticed that not all the audience might be old enough to even know that these people were real. So they have commissioned a primer – a sort of recruitment programme to the cause if you will – about these … well, I’ve used the word too much already. These guys.
The Real Spies Among Friends takes us from 1930s Cambridge, where the quartet, all of them scions of good families, destined for jobs and lives at the heart of the establishment, first met. They were all bright, most of them beautiful, two were gay, two were not, and they saw communism as the only good answer to the rise of fascism in Europe. Philby was especially keen on the notion, so when he was invited to tea by a Russian secret agent in 1934 and asked if he wanted to sign up to the Soviet cause – and did he have any pals who would like to do the same, perchance? – the answer was da and da.
They were sleeper agents until the war came, by which time they had claimed their birthrights and become respected figures in MI6 (Philby), MI5 (Blunt), the Foreign Office (Maclean) and in the case of Burgess, who was always a bit of a showoff, all three.
On we jog-trot along the well-marked path, Allam noting the milestones as we go and letting us stop for short briefings with various talking heads as needful. There are historians, former US and Russian intelligence officers, and biographers – all united in their attempts to rein in their absolute bogglement at the power of the old boys’ network and how it allowed its members to get away with so much, so easily, for so long. And to evade any kind of real retribution – beyond being exiled to Russia, the country they so admired but did not in any way wish to experience first-hand – in the end. Burgess died of drink a decade or so after defecting. Maclean worked in Moscow for 20 years and died in 1983. Philby lasted five more years and was buried there with full Soviet military honours, as befitting such a hero. Art historian Sir Anthony Blunt, famously, remained in post as Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, even after confessing in 1964, in return for immunity from prosecution and a promise that it would be kept secret for at least 15 years, that he was “the fourth man”. Thatcher – yes, I know, but a stopped clock is right twice a day and all that – named though not noticeably shamed him when the promise expired in 1979 and stripped him of his knighthood. He had to live as a mere mister until his death four years later. The contemporary footage of him shrugging and averring that “I haven’t betrayed my conscience” is one thing that remains amazing however many times you see it – or see the line quoted.
If you are in the mood to be recruited into one of our weirder fandoms, this is the introductory documentary for you. If not, or if you feel quite enough energy and attention has been devoted to these multiply-murderous-at-a-distance men, do turn away and focus on better things and better people.
The Real Spies Among Friends aired on ITV1 and is available on ITVX.
