An Agent for the Duration

Following the defections of Burgess and Maclean in 1951, the hunt was on for the mysterious "third man" who had tipped them off. When Kim Philby was revealed as a traitor, attention then focused on the fourth man, and eventually Anthony Blunt was exposed. When word leaked out that the Soviets had masterminded a "Ring of Five" - all of them spies who had been contemporaries at Cambridge University - the mole-hunts continued, but remained inconclusive until John Cairncross made a secret confession to MI5. In this book, he describes what made him turn to espionage, and how he became a key figure in the KGB's most notorious and successful network. Cairncross, who possessed one of the most brilliant minds of his generation, worked at the most secret heart of Whitehall; as a diplomat in the pre-war Foreign Office (where he came top in the entrance exam and shared a desk with Donald Maclean); as a bureaucrat in the Treasury; as private secretary to Lord Hankey; as a linguist and codebreaker at Bletchley Park; and as an expert on German affairs in the Secret Intelligence Service. What classified data did he pass to his contacts? Who were they? How much did he know about the other spies?
How did MI5 track him down? Why did he try to entrap his recruiter? And was his confession genuine? These questions are answered by the only Cambridge spy to have broken ranks to tell his side of the story. He tells of the pre-war travels in Europe that influence his anti-Nazi committment, his previously undocumented relationship with the other agents, his lifelong friendship with Graham Greene and his arguments with his Soviet controllers.