Going Straight

Neal Ascherson

  • After Long Silence by Michael Straight
    Collins, 351 pp, £11.95, March 1983, ISBN 0 00 217001 9
  • A Matter of Trust: MI5 1945-72 by Nigel West
    Weidenfeld, 196 pp, £8.95, December 1982, ISBN 0 297 78253 3

It is certainly time for a long silence. The long clamour about those who have come so strangely to be called ‘the Cambridge spies’, revelations malevolent, piteous or merely inaccurate, ought to be wound up after the publication of Michael Straight’s contribution. Very possibly, Anthony Blunt will one day write such a book himself. But the names have almost all been named, the questions of motive worn smooth, the titles and pensions (some of them) stripped like epaulettes, the spell in the pillory served. Let’s get the blanket over this parrot and enjoy a spell of peace.

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