DONALD MACCLEAN DRIVER
DONALD MACCLEAN FULL

(Left to Right) Climenti Voroshilov, president of the Soviet Union Grigori Zhukov, Defence Minister Nikita Khrushev, Communist Party Chief Nikolai Bulganin, Prime Minister Georgi Malenkov, vice-Chairman of the council of Ministers and Anastas Mikoyan, first vice-chairman. Red Leaders Take A Bow - The Leaders of the Soviet Union in front of the Lenin Mausoleum in red Square, Moscow on November 7, 1956. Public school (Gresham's), Cambridge University (Trinity Hall) and early admission to the Foreign Office – he was only 22 when he became a third secretary – seemed part of that inevitable progression granted to those with silver spoons clamped firmly between their teeth. Every middle-class privilege – and curse – was his. Privilege and curseĭonald Maclean (1913-83) was the son of a knighted cabinet minister. The ideology – communism – that spurred these traitors on may be vanished or moribund, but the attitudes, assumptions, patterns of behaviour and gross sins of omission that the Maclean and Burgess defection exposed are both timeless and very British.

DONALD MACCLEAN FULL

But, as this superb biography makes clear, the story of Maclean and his fellow travellers is full of contemporary relevance, particularly for this country. Spying has changed – it's all about surveillance and whistleblowing now – and the privileged, intellectualised, haute bourgeoisie treason that the Cambridge Five represented seems almost passé – a curiosity, belonging to a different time and another world. Maclean, Burgess, Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross are part of 20th-century espionage history – though the infamous resonance that their names once generated is steadily diminishing. They were the first notorious alumni of what was to become known as the 'Cambridge Five': that generation of British traitors and double agents, all graduates of Cambridge University, that so defines the British experience of the Cold War. Donald Maclean along with Guy Burgess, two senior British diplomats, defected to the Soviet Union in 1951 although their presence there was not admitted until 1956. I very much doubt if the joke would detonate now. It was the first time I heard of Donald Maclean.

DONALD MACCLEAN DRIVER

I turned to the teacher: 'I'm sorry, sir,' I said, 'But Burgess and Maclean are missing.' The unbridled hilarity that greeted my remark – from teacher and bus driver – alerted me to the fact that I had inadvertently stumbled on an adult joke. I counted and recounted – we were short by two. We were allowed 30 minutes of liberty in the city centre before returning and as the senior boy I was responsible for counting heads to make sure all were present after our brief furlough. Back in the mid-1960s, I went on a school trip to Inverness.

Donald macclean