‘Stalin’s Englishman; the Lives of Guy Burgess’ by Andrew Lownie

 

 

(published by Hodder and Stoughton, 2015

The defection to the USSR of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean in 1951 remained prominent in the British press for almost a decade. Their defection was followed  a few years later by that of Kim Philby, and eventually also the unmasking and confession of Sir Anthony Blunt. These four, together with, it is surmised, John Cairncross, were known as the ‘Cambridge Five,’ the men who passed reams of secret documents to their Soviet handlers.

All five men were members of what is universally recognised as the British upper class, born into wealth, given the best education money could buy and blessed with the intelligence and ability that gave them access to senior politicians and enabled them to attain senior positions in MI5, MI6, the BBC and the Foreign Office.

Andrew Lownie’s research into the life and times of Guy Burgess, the man who is considered to have been the principal secret agent, reveals a person of outstanding intellectual ability who went through the rigorous education system accorded to young males in Britain (Dartmouth, Eton, Oxbridge). Perhaps this system had something to do with the fact that most of the Cambridge Five were avowed homosexuals, and Burgess was apparently extremely promiscuous in this regard, even though at the time homosexual behavior was banned by law in England. This may also have enabled the Russians to blackmail the men into cooperating with them.

While studying for a degree in history at Cambridge Burgess became convinced that Russian Communism was the way forward, and he supported various workers’ causes. At that time the Russians were assiduously seeking out students who would support their cause and serve as agents on their behalf. America, which was in the throes of McCarthyism, was abhorred by Burgess. After leaving university he was employed organising talks on current events at the BBC, later moving on to various posts in the Foreign Office, while Maclean, Philby and the others rose through the ranks of MI5 and MI6, the secret surveillance and espionage agencies.

There can be little doubt that the background shared by the Cambridge Five with most of the other employees of the institutions in which they were employed helped to keep them in their positions. The concept of ‘the old school tie,’ and the fact that they shared the same way of dress, habits, haunts and speech cadences served to prevent them from coming under suspicion. Referring to espionage activity, a letter sent by one Foreign Office official to another contains the sentence: ‘It seems that Donald (i.e., Maclean) is up to his old tricks.’ In a telling phrase, Lownie comments on this in one of the copious notes to the book, ‘This was alas typical of the way Maclean’s case was handled by the Foreign Office.’

Burgess’s heavy drinking eventually got him into trouble, and when Maclean’s cover was blown the two men managed to defect undetected to the USSR even though the British authorities had begun to grow suspicious of them and were investigating their activities. This, however, was pursued in a bungling and somewhat lackadaisical fashion. Reading about the episode today brings scenes from the satirical television series ‘Yes, Minister’ to mind. Only the actual events were in no way amusing.

In the final chapter of the book Lownie speculates on the reasons for Burgess’s actions, and concludes that he experienced rejection and alienation in his youth, as well as the lack of a father (his father was often away at sea, and died when Burgess was only thirteen), causing him psychological stress. While there was certainly an ideological element in his actions, he also had a rebellious streak and a desire to ‘épater le bourgeois.’ The man who loved to engage in intellectual debate, gossip with friends, visit the London clubs where the members of the upper class congregated and enjoy the good things of life, ended his days in the drab environment of Soviet Russia, drinking heavily while missing his friends and all things English.

It has taken Andrew Lownie thirty years to complete this fascinating book, which is based on an immense body of written and oral material – published and unpublished theses, books, interviews, correspondence and manuscripts. Lownie has succeeded in bringing to life – and  even arousing our sympathy for – a character who betrayed his country without batting an eyelid or experiencing a single moment of regret.

I was privileged to attend the author’s talk about the book given at the Charroux Literary Festival held in France last August, and this aroused my appetite to read it. I’m glad to say that I am now able to treasure the copy signed by Mr. Lownie himself and I have derived immense enjoyment from reading it.

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An Evening with the Author of ‘Woman in Gold’

 

When I heard that Anne-Marie O’Connor would be speaking at the Tower of David Museum in a dialogue with fellow-author Ora Ahimeir I jumped at the opportunity to see and hear the author of the monumental book ‘Woman in Gold’ in person. As readers of this journal are doubtless aware, the book relates the saga of Maria Altman’s battle to reclaim the painting by Gustav Klimt of her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, which was expropriated from the family in Vienna by the Nazis and since then retained by the Austrians.

The evening began with a brief personal account by Anne-Marie O’Connor, who has been living in Jerusalem for the last four years, of the almost accidental way she came to write her book. In her work as a journalist she became interested in the character and history of Maria Altman who, like her, was living in California. One thing led to another, and she ended up travelling all over California to interview other former residents of Vienna. Thus, she gradually built up a picture of what happened then and later, what became of the families and individuals who had once formed part of Vienna’s intellectual, professional and social elite when the Nazis took over and instituted a regime of persecution, terror, plunder and murder. As the material she was collecting assumed ever-greater proportions, O’Connor realized that she would not be able to compress it into one or two articles, and so the book, to which she ended up devoting five years of her life, came into being.

The dialogue between the two writers (Ora Ahimeir published her first novel, ‘Bride,’ in 2012 and is currently working on another), took the form of questions addressed by each one to the other. The two women were located on a dais at one end of the large room in the ancient building, with a table between the two chairs on which they were sitting. When O’Connor was asked how, as an Irish woman living in the US, she had come to interest herself in that very Jewish subject, she replied that as a journalist in America she was used to investigating all kinds of topics and interviewing diverse people. She added that having had a Jewish step-mother from an early age, she had read a great deal of Jewish-oriented literature.

When it was time for questions from the audience someone asked O’Connor what it felt like to have become a bestselling author. In her reply the author explained that she was glad to be able to share that story with so many people, and that she was particularly delighted that the book had done well in Israel, where so many of the people who had undergone similar experiences lived. She noted that the whole episode of encountering the former Viennese residents had been a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ experience which had enriched her spiritually and given her the opportunity to write about a variety of subjects.

O’Connor also stated that the success of her book had triggered several cases in which refugees and Holocaust survivors claimed restitution of sequestered property, and that in many instances these had been successful. The book had opened up hearts and minds to what had become of the property and possessions of survivors, and the groundswell of public opinion had played a major role in obtaining justice for a large number of individuals.

As the evening concluded, Ora Ahimeir told the audience that Zuckerkandel, the name of a family which is mentioned several times in O’Connor’s book, was the maiden name of her late mother. There had been two branches of the family, one wealthy and educated living in Vienna and one poor and orthodox living in Poland. There had been very little contact between the two branches before the war, but both ended up in the same concentration camp, where they met their deaths together. I foresee another fascinating book about to be written.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coming Home

 

It’s two o’clock in the morning as the ‘Fasten Seat-Belts’ sign comes on in the plane bringing us back to Tel Aviv. We anxiously scan the darkness outside for the first signs of the city that never sleeps.

And suddenly, there it is. The strings of lights that tell us that Tel Aviv and its surroundings are alive and kicking. The lights are everywhere, shining like strings of jewels, guiding us to our destination.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is not one of my favourite people, said recently that until the Jews came back to live in this part of the world once more, about one hundred years ago, the region was desolate. I don’t know how much truth there is in that statement but there can be no doubt that the thriving, bustling, energized city of Tel-Aviv did not exist, and the millions of Jews who have made Israel their home have brought progress, modernity and vitality to what was formerly a neglected backwater of the Turkish Empire. And before that, too, for thousands of years, Jews lived here, although not in sufficient quantities to create a viable political entity of their own.

So that every time I return to my country, Israel, I experience a certain uplifting feeling, knowing that, unlike previous generations of Jews, my generation is privileged to have a country that is our own, with all the attendant difficulties as well as all the achievements – and there are plenty of both. And that is something to treasure.

After having been away from home for over a month, I seem to have forgotten how to cope with the vagaries of the local climate. How could I have forgotten that in Jerusalem, which sits at 400 feet above sea level, the mornings are cool, no matter how hot the forecast day-time temperature? I have just come back from a European country, France, that is engaged in the descent into winter, where the day starts off cold and remains cold throughout. I also spent a few days in Valletta, Malta, which starts off hot and remains thus throughout the day and night. There can be no doubt that when it comes to climate, Jerusalem is unique.

Of course, being reunited with friends and family is the high point of coming home, and it is almost worthwhile going away in order to appreciate the happy reunion with our loved ones. I no longer seem to be bothered by the lack of sleep that made our first day one that extended over forty-eight hours, and the necessity of implementing the myriad of mundane tasks that awaited us – unpacking, attending to laundry, going shopping, and doing cooking – so that sleep was simply not an option.

But who cares about such trivialities. Hallelujah, we’re home!

‘Judas’ by Amos Oz

(Published (in Hebrew) by Keter Books)

Amos Oz, the doyen of Hebrew writers, was not awarded the prestigious International Man Booker literary prize, which went instead to David Grossman’s book, ‘A Horse Walks into a Bar’ (see my review of it in my blog post for 3 August). Having read both books in the original Hebrew, I am unable to give an opinion as to the quality of the translation of either, but as far as I can tell Oz’s book is a more enjoyable read.

The story concerns the three-month period in the winter of 1959 spent by drop-out student, Shmuel Ash, in a house in Jerusalem, where he is employed to serve as a debating counterpart to an elderly and disabled intellectual. Oz’s descriptions of the exigencies of the Jerusalem winter, the interior of the strange house and the characters of its even stranger inhabitants seem somehow to ring true. As someone who has lived in Jerusalem for fifty years, this reader found the characters described in the book, ranging from Shmuel Ash’s professor at the university, Gustav Eisenschloss, the old man whom Shmuel is employed to entertain, Gershom Wald, and his enigmatic but seductive daughter-in-law, Atalya, the widow of his son who was killed in Israel’s War of Independence, convincing and even vaguely familiar.

A sense of menace hangs over the events – or rather non-events – recounted in the book, ranging from the political disagreement in the period prior to the foundation of the state of Israel between Atalya’s late father and David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, on the one hand, to Shmuel Ash’s attempts to write an academic analysis of the attitude of the Jews to Jesus through the ages, on the other. Through their disagreement, Amos Oz manages to present the argument both for and against the establishment of the Jewish state with rare conviction. The concept of betrayal, of the betrayer as ‘Judas,’ and the Judas of the gospels as the representative of the Jews who rejected Jesus and Christianity, also runs through the book as a constant leitmotif. Over and above the intellectual parrying of the various characters hangs Shmuel’s attraction for he unattainable Atalya, and the developing relationship – or rather non-relationship – betwee n them.

The frequent repetition of the actions that constitute Shmuel’s daily routine of ablutions, regular haunts and eating habits tends to become somewhat tedious after a while. The incidental chapter that purports to give Judas’s eye-witness account of the crucifixion of Jesus and the events leading up to it seems to me to be superfluous and out of place, even though it does provide some kind of explanation for what happened and why. Even so, the detailed and gory account jars on the reader’s sensibilities and interrupts the flow of the narrative that concerns the characters in the story, and Jerusalem in the period before the Six Day War.

In this book Amos Oz paints a picture of a time and place that are no more, and of characters that belong to that time and place, and are possibly no longer to be found in the Israel that emerged in the wake of the Six-Day War and all that it entailed. I have a sneaking feeling that Oz regards the bumbling, fumbling hero, Shmuel Ash, as something of an alter ego, which in my view couldn’t be further from the truth. Nonetheless, for someone like me, who is not averse to a bit of nostalgia, the book is entertaining, enlightening and enjoyable.

Happy Days

Although we’re coming to the end of our vacation in France we have not been cut off from happenings in the rest of the world, specifically Israel and England.

Summer in Israel is always hot and this year it seems to have been hotter than usual, at least according to the level of complaints emanating from that corner of the Middle East. But whether this is due to global warming or greater sensitivity on the part of the local population it’s difficult to say. Two things are clear – the frequency of terrorist attacks seems to have fallen, and the political hostility between the various parties and factions is as intense as ever, with no apparent solution in sight. So nothing new there.

As for my other homeland, England, matters have become far more emotional and malevolent ever since the egregious Brexit referendum last year. Those who oppose it give no quarter in deriding, criticizing and otherwise castigating those political leaders involved in negotiating and presumably eventually executing the policy. The criticisms range from vicious caricatures of their personal characteristics to name-calling and total rejection of their intellectual and emotional suitability for their task.

One thing is clear, the hypocrisy of politicians has never been revealed in all its unsavoury clarity as has been the case with the Conservative party. Several of its leading members, including the current Prime Minister, Theresa May, advocated remaining in the European Union prior to the referendum but, once the result in favour of leaving became clear, they promptly undertook to implement a policy diametrically opposed to what they had originally advocated. We all knew that politicians weren’t to be trusted, but this is just too blatant to be simply papered over or ignored.

The Labour party is no better than the Conservatives, having consistently wavered between opposing and supporting some kind of arrangement to leave the EU. Its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, first opposed the idea, even penalizing party members who disagreed with him, and subsequently coming round to some kind of cack-handed support for a ‘soft Brexit,’ whatever that may mean.

For observers outside the country, England seems to be going to the dogs, with the decline in the exchange rate of the pound against all other currencies, the rise in anti-Semitic and racist incidents, wholesale departures of professionals who are non-nationals and a general decline in the quality of life. But when we spent a week in London earlier this year everything seemed pretty much as usual, with charming baristas, waiters and shop-assistants hailing from all the corners of the world, and life continuing pretty much as usual. I’ve quoted Samuel Johnson’s dictum before about he who tires of London having tired of life, and it’s as true today as ever.

Naturally, people are worried about what lies ahead, but the fact of the matter is that nobody knows. The politicians charged with conducting the negotiations are portrayed by anti-Brexiters as inept, but the process of negotiating is itself inevitably clouded in secrecy. Statements issued by the representatives of the EU are disparaging about statements made by the British negotiators, but it’s difficult to tell whether this is just part and parcel of the process or genuine expressions of opinion. At least on the subject of reciprocal health insurance between the EU and Britain agreement has been reached that enables existing coverage to be maintained, which doubtless comes as a great relief to British nationals residing in the countries of the EU, as well as to European nationals living in the UK.

There are still a great many hurdles to be overcome in the negotiation process, chief among them trade agreements, which are traditionally complex and require lengthy talks before any kind of conclusion can be reached. Whether the politicians representing England can achieve the desired outcome remains to be seen, but for the moment they seem to be intent on fulfilling the mission which they have taken upon themselves to achieve, even if this was not what they originally wanted in their heart of hearts. But which politician ever followed the dictates of his or her heart?

All politicians everywhere are steadfast in seeking to remain in power, and for all those concerned in this particular instance that seems to be the salient point.