What pushed Blunt, Burgess, Cairncross, Maclean and Philby into Soviet
hands?
With access to recently released papers and other neglected documents,
this sharp analysis of the intelligence world examines how and why these
men and others betrayed their country and what this cost Britain and its
allies.
Enemies Within is a new history of the influence of Moscow on Britain
told through the stories of those who chose to spy for the Soviet Union.
It also challenges entrenched assumptions about abused trust, corruption
and Establishment cover-ups that began with the Cambridge Five and the
disappearance of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean on the night boat to
Saint-Malo in 1951.
In a book that is as intellectually thrilling as it is entertaining and
illuminating, Richard Davenport-Hines traces the bonds between
individuals, networks and organisations over generations to offer a
study of character, both individual and institutional. At its core lie
the operative traits of boarding schools, the universities of Oxford and
Cambridge, the Intelligence Division, Foreign Office, MI5, MI6 and
Moscow Centre.
Davenport-Hines tells many stories of espionage, counter-espionage and
treachery. With its vast scope, ambition and scholarship, Enemies
Within charts how the undermining of authority, the rejection of
expertise and the suspicion of educational advantages began, and how
these have transformed the social and political temper of modern
Britain.
