Incredible lost footage of an interview with one of the Cambridge Five spy ring filmed after his defection to the Soviet Union has emerged in Canada.

In the film made in 1959, Guy Burgess claims he is not a traitor, but admits to being 'a socialist, a Marxist and a Bolshevik'.

Burgess caused one of the biggest scandals of the Cold War when he - along with fellow double agent Donald Maclean - fled to the other side of the Iron Curtain.

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Footage has emerged of the Cambridge spy Guy Burgess speaking in 1959, after his defection to the USSR

The pair and three other members of Cambridge Five passed information to the Soviet Union for more than ten years and their defection was seen as a huge embarrassment for British authorities.

Little is known about the pair's lives in the Soviet Union - which when they fled in 1951 was still ruled by the iron fist of tyrant Joseph Stalin.

But an archivist in Canada has now uncovered an interview which the country's CBC carried out with Burgess in Moscow in 1959, in which he defends his decision to leave Britain for the USSR.

In the footage, filmed four years before Burgess's death, he said: 'I want to live in the Soviet Union because I'm a socialist and it's a socialist country and I enjoy doing so. I can't imagine living in England during the Cold War.'

The disgraced intelligence officer struggles to answer a question about whether he is a traitor or not, stuttering: 'Judging from the letters I get from people whose names I won't mention... they certainly don't think so.'

He claims the case against him is 'hearsay' and insists he and Maclean only went to Russia as 'tourists'.

The interview was filmed by a Canadian journalist in 1959 but was put into an archive for more than 50 years

Burgess (pictured, left, in his 1950s passport photo) caused one of the shocks of the Cold War when he and fellow double agent Donald Maclean fled to the Soviet Union

He insists he has no connections with the Soviet regime, but backs Communist policy by claiming they were the only side trying to 'clear things up'.

The film footage backs up claims that Burgess became an alcoholic during his final years, spent cut off from the West in a small flat in Moscow.

It is believed the appearance fee he charged for the interview - carried out in a cemetery in Moscow - was paid in Scotch whisky.

He slurs his words at several points during the 10-minute interview and waves a cigar about during some of his answers.

Wearing his Eton tie and a camel-hair overcoat, he says he would like to return to England to see his family, but only if he could be sure he would be able to return to Russia.

The interview was mysteriously not reported in Britain at the time.

It has now emerged that Burgess, pictured with journalist Tom Driberg in his Moscow flat after his defection, gave an interview to Canadian TV in 1959, shortly before his death

Burgess was played by actor Alan Bates in a TV adaptation of Alan Bennett's play, An Englishman Abroad

The film was then archived under the name of 'Dame Edith Sitwell', a poet who was interviewed in the same programme, and so its wider relevance was lost until now.

After viewing the video, MI5's official historian Professor Christopher Andrew told the BBC the interview would have been approved by Burgess's KGB minders as a form of propaganda.

He suggested that this could be the reason the interview never saw the light of day in Britain, where the media would not have wanted to aid the enemy.