Calls for release of cold war secrets grow, as the Foreign Office, MI6 and MI5 keep past mistakes under lock and key

Another biography of Guy Burgess. Readers and reviewers may be forgiven for wondering what more there is to say about the much investigated, albeit most enigmatic, member of the Cambridge spy ring.

Guy Burgess, the Spy Who Knew Everyone, by Stewart Purvis and Jeff Hulbert (Biteback) has just been published, less than five months after Andrew Lownie’s Stalin’s Englishman (Hodder & Stoughton).

After Lownie and before Purvis/Hulbert, The National Archives at Kew released more than 400 hitherto secret files relating to Burgess and other members of the Cambridge ring (the latter biography’s main new take is that Burgess deliberately cultivated his sexual indiscretions and drunkeness to throw everyone off the track).

Lownie, both author and literary agent, this week stepped up his battle with the information commissioner and Information Rights Tribunal to get Whitehall to release many more files about cold war spies, including Kim Philby and George Blake. He was told, first, that their release would damage the UK’s foreign relations, then that they would cause distress to individuals still living..

More than 20% of files relating to the spies, most of whom defected more than 50 years ago, remain closed. They include a report to George VI and files on their acquaintances, including Goronwy Rees, Victor Rothschild and Harold Nicolson, all long dead.

The secret files may reveal the truth about when Whitehall knew about Burgess and Donald Maclean’s dramatic escape to France on Friday 25 May 1951. Lownie’s contacts say the government knew late that day, and the Foreign Office on the Saturday. Yet Whitehall officials did not sound the alarm until the following Tuesday. The Foreign Office, MI6 and MI5 all have an interest in covering up, to protect themselves from huge embarrassment. Another biography of Burgess – and the other spies – will almost certainly emerge, after yet more taxpayers’ money is spent by Whitehall officials in the futile attempt to keep the files under lock and key for ever.