Conspiracy of Silence: The Secret Life of Anthony Blunt

by Barrie Penrose and Simon Freeman

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374128855
• ISBN13: 9780374128852
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 616 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Silence Shattered

"Conspiracy of Silence" focuses on the life and career of Anthony Blunt, the eminent British art historian and Soviet spy (who was unmasked by Margaret Thatcher in 1979, despite an official promise of immunity). Barrie Penrose and Simon Freeman have written an account that is both entertaining and well-researched. Based upon interviews with sundry friends, associates, and enemies of Blunt and his Cambridge spy colleagues (Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Cairncross), the book presents the facts, which are never dull, and at the same time maintains an objectivity that allows the reader make up his mind about the case (There is none of the gratuitous moralizing in which some authors have indulged in order to condemn the Cambridge Spies in the minds of the reading public.). The authors are especially effective in elucidating the political climate of the 1930s (the era of the hunger marches in Britain) and the reasons why so many privileged young undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge eagerly embraced Communism, an ideology that they believed was the only means to combat the inexorable rise of Fascism on the European continent. The book, written in 1987, four years after the deaths of Blunt and Maclean (and one year before the demise of Philby), also focuses on the official British propensity for silence about its secret services, the existence of which was not even acknowledged publicly until recently. According to the authors, the conspiracy of official silence is responsible for the eruption of one spy scandal after another since the 1951 defections of Burgess and Maclean. Remarkably, the silence was broken, in the case of Penrose and Freeman, by members of the secret intelligence services who were willing to be interviewed by the authors, despite the tyranny of the Official Secrets Act. The silence was, furthermore, shattered once and for all by the persistence of ex-MI5 officer Peter Wright, who, in his effort to publish his memoir "Spycatcher," took his case to court in Australia. Since the authors' own book was also placed in jeopardy, they present a fascinating account of Wright's case, which succeeded despite the bullying efforts of MI5, which, they recount, wanted to maintain secrecy merely for the sake of secrecy. In the end, Penrose and Freeman leave their readers with a devastating condemnation of the climate of official secrecy, under which treason was able to flourish. As they note at the end of the book: "It had taken an Australian judge to cut through the hypocrisies and lies of Whitehall. Perhaps it was not so surprising, after all, that Britain had produced Anthony Blunt. Indeed, it might be said that Britain deserved Anthony Blunt."

Riveting! Absorbing! Couldn't Put it Down!

"Conspiracy of Silence" represents historical writing at its very best. Focusing on the life and career of Anthony Blunt, the eminent British art historian and Soviet spy (who was unmasked by Margaret Thatcher in 1979, despite an official promise of immunity), Barrie Penrose and Simon Freeman have written an account that is both entertaining and well-researched. Based upon interviews with sundry friends, associates, and enemies of Blunt and his Cambridge spy colleagues (Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Cairncross), the book presents the facts, which are never dull, and at the same time maintains an objectivity that allows the reader make up his mind about the case (There is none of the gratuitous moralizing in which some of the other authors indulge in order to condemn the Cambridge Spies in the minds of the reading public.). The book is especially valuable in elucidating the political climate of the 1930s (the era of the hunger marches in Britain) and the reasons why so many privileged young undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge eagerly embraced Communism as what they believed was the only means to combat the inexorable rise of Fascism on the European continent. The book, written in 1987, four years after the deaths of Blunt and Maclean (and one year before the demise of Philby), also focuses on the official British propensity for silence about its secret services, the existence of which was not even acknowledged publicly until recently. It is the Conspiracy of Silence of the title that allowed for the eruption of one spy scandal after another since the 1950 defection of Burgess and Maclean. Remarkably, the silence was broken, in the case of Penrose and Freeman, by members of the secret services who were willing to be interviewed by the authors, despite the Official Secrets Act. It was furthermore shattered once and for all by the persistence of ex-MI5 officer Peter Wright, who, in his effort to publish his memoir "Spycatcher," took his case to court in Australia. Since the authors' own book was also placed in jeopardy, they present a fascinating account of Wright's case, which succeeded despite the bullying efforts of MI5, which, they recount, wanted to maintain secrecy merely for the sake of secrecy. In the end, Penrose and Freeman leave their readers with a devastating condemnation of the climate of official secrecy, under which treason was able to flourish (p. 570): "It had taken an Australian judge to cut through the hypocrisies and lies of Whitehall. Perhaps it was not so surprising, after all, that Britain had produced Anthony Blunt. Indeed, it might be said that Britain deserved Anthony Blunt."