News | Burgess and Maclean

The stentorian tones of Stuart Hibberd inform 1950s Britain about the disappearance of two Foreign Office officials. Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean had last been seen on 26 May, some two weeks previously. Little could the British public have guessed that by this point they were holed up in a Moscow flat as guests of the Kremlin.

The public were able to obtain a more detailed account of the affair courtesy of 'The Sunday People' newspaper. Revelations from the recently defected Soviet spy Vladimir Petrov shed light on the background to Burgess and Maclean's flight and finally forced the government to publish a report on the situation.