Donald Maclean (spy)

It had already produced Tom Wintringham (1898–1949), a Marxist military historian, journalist, author and one of the founders of the Communist Party of Great Britain and editor of various party journals and newspapers.

James Klugmann and Roger Simon both went with Maclean to Cambridge University and joined the Communist Party at around the same time.

Klugmann became the official historian of the British Communist Party, while Simon was later a left-wing Labour peer.

When Maclean was 16, his father was elected for the North Cornwall constituency, and he spent some time in Cornwall during vacations.

At Gresham's, some of his contemporaries were Jack Simon (later Baron Simon, a Law Lord), James Klugmann (1912–1977), Roger Simon (1913–2002), Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) and Alan Lloyd Hodgkin (later a scientist and Nobel Laureate).

Gresham's was considered to be a school both liberal and progressive.

Donald Duart Maclean (25 May 1913 – 6 March 1983) was a British diplomat and Soviet double agent who participated in the Cambridge Five spy ring.

After being recruited by a Soviet agent as an undergraduate student, Maclean entered the civil service.

Following the 1918 general election, in which Liberal Party leader H. H. Asquith lost his seat, Maclean's father Sir Donald was chosen as chairman of the rump of the 23 independent Liberal MPs who backed Asquith in the House of Commons.

As the Labour Party had no leader and Sinn Féin did not attend, he became titular Leader of the Opposition.

Maclean's parents had houses in London (later in Buckinghamshire) as well as in the Scottish Borders, where his father represented Peebles and Southern Midlothian, but the family lived mostly in and around London.

He grew up in a very political household, in which world affairs were constantly discussed.

At the age of 13, he was sent to Gresham's School in Norfolk, where he remained from 1926 until 1931, when he was 18.

In 1931 his father entered the Coalition Cabinet as President of the Board of Education.

Maclean's education began as a boarder at St Ronan's School, Worthing.

From Gresham's, Maclean won a place at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, arriving in 1931 to read Modern Languages.

He played rugby for his college through the winter of 1932–33.

In Maclean's second year at Cambridge his father died.

Maclean's political views grew much more apparent in the following years in light of "his admiring, if sometimes puzzled, mother".

In his final years in college Maclean had become a campus figure, many knowing that he was a communist.

In the winter of 1933–34 he wrote a book review for Cambridge Left, to which other leading communists contributed, such as John Cornford, Charles Madge and the Irish scientist, J. D. Bernal.

Donald reviewed Contemporary Literature and Social Revolution by J. D. Charques, praising the book for its readiness "to hint at a Marxist conception of literature".

In 1934, he became the editor of the Silver Crescent, the Trinity Hall students' magazine.

His editorials stressed the decline in world trade, rearmament and arms trafficking.

In one article, he insisted: "England is in the throes of a capitalist crisis....If the analysis in the Editorial: A Personal is correct, there is an excellent reason why everyone of military age should start thinking about politics."

In a letter to Granta he ascribed the demand for a democratically elected student council, equality for female students and rights to use college premises for political meetings.

In 1934, his last year at Cambridge, Maclean became an agent of the Soviet Union's People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, abbreviated from the Russian as NKVD.

He was then instructed to give up political activity and enter the Diplomatic Service.

He graduated with a first in Modern Languages.

After spending a year preparing for the Civil Service examinations, Maclean passed with first-class honours.

At the Final Board, Maclean was asked by one of the panel interviewing him, whether he had favoured communism while a university student, ostensibly because the panel knew of a trip he had taken to Moscow in his second year at Cambridge.

Maclean said: "At Cambridge, I was initially favourable to it but I am little by little getting disenchanted with it."

His apparent sincerity satisfied members of the panel, which included a family friend, Lady Violet Bonham Carter.

In 1938, he was appointed as Third Secretary at the British embassy in Paris.

He served in London and Washington, D.C., achieving promotion to First Secretary.

He was subsequently posted to Egypt, and then was appointed head of the American Department in the Foreign Office.

The Soviets helped Maclean to defect from London to Moscow in 1951.

In Moscow, he worked as a specialist on British policy and on relations between the Soviet Union and NATO.

He died there on 6 March 1983.

Born in Marylebone, London, Donald Duart Maclean was the son of Sir Donald MacLean and Gwendolen Margaret Devitt.