cover image A Divided Life: A Personal Portrait of the Spy Donald MacLean

A Divided Life: A Personal Portrait of the Spy Donald MacLean

Robert Cecil. William Morrow & Company, $18.95 (212pp) ISBN 978-0-688-08119-5

Both a revealing, intimate look at the ``Cambridge Comintern'' and a riveting portrait of a reluctant spy, this evenhanded biography of double-agent Donald Maclean sets him apart from Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and others in the circle. According to Cecil, a British diplomat who attended Cambridge with Maclean and served with him in various posts, the tall, handsome, soft-spoken spy had great distaste for his duplicitous lifestyle, and numbed his guilt with alcohol. A dedicated Marxist and left-wing student activist, Maclean is shown rebelling against his stern Presbyterian father and landing in the Kremlin's lap. After helping his Soviet masters by spying in London, Cairo and Washington, Maclean defected to the U.S.S.R. in 1951. His last 31 years, spent in his adopted communist haven, were a letdown, maintains Cecil: his wife had an affair with Philby, then emigrated to the U.S.; his three children spurned Russia and made their homes in the West; and his faith in communism was shaken by Soviet reality. Photos. (Mar.)