Guy Burgess (1911-1963) was a British broadcaster, intelligence officer, and diplomat and a member of the Cambridge spy ring. Recruited at Cambridge in the mid-1930s, he worked at the BBC, then for MI6’s Section D and the propaganda organization that grew from it, and joined the Foreign Office after the war. Throughout he passed documents to Soviet intelligence and helped identify further recruits.

In 1950 he was posted as second secretary to the British Embassy in Washington, where he lodged with Kim Philby. After misconduct led to his recall in 1951, he returned to London and, on May 25, 1951, fled with Donald Maclean, who was about to be questioned as a suspected Soviet agent. Burgess’s unplanned departure cast suspicion on Philby. The British government confirmed the defection in a 1955 white paper, and Burgess and Maclean appeared at a Moscow press event in 1956. Burgess died in Moscow in August 1963.

Sources

• United Kingdom, Foreign Office. Report Concerning the Disappearance of Two Former Foreign Office Officials. Cmd. 9577. HMSO, September 1955.
• Andrew, Christopher. Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5. Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
• Lownie, Andrew. Stalin’s Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess. Hodder and Stoughton, 2015.

Summary entry. A fuller, document-based profile is in preparation.