(Ebook) A Spy Named Orphan: The Enigma of Donald Maclean by Roland Philipps ISBN 9780393608571, 0393608573

(Ebook) A Spy Named Orphan: The Enigma of Donald Maclean by Roland Philipps ISBN 9780393608571, 0393608573

Donald Maclean is the most infamous of Britain’s twentieth-century spies, a double agent who defected to the Soviet Union, and whose betrayal plunged the Cold War alliance between Britain and the United States into crisis.Part of the ‘Cambridge Five’, Maclean was a true ideologue and the most complex and compelling character of the group. Making use of previously classified material from the SIS and Foreign Office archives, Roland Philipps unravels the man and his many contradictions: a childhood and upbringing filled with strictures; an adult life of repressions, deceptions and binges; a marriage complicated by secrets of its own; and a looming sense of his fate closing in on him.Taking us back to the golden age of espionage,A Spy Named Orphanexamines the character, motivation and impact of the most ardent, dangerous and enigmatic spy of the twentieth century. At the same time it illuminates the changes in world power after the Second World War, tracing the decline of American and British relations as well as the growing chill of the Cold War that brought us to the verge of catastrophe.