Charles Cumming: LibraryThing Author Interview

Charles Cumming is the author of the spy novels A Spy by Nature, The Spanish Game, and Typhoon. His new novel, The Trinity Six (St. Martin's Press) takes us into the hunt for the Cambridge Spy Ring's long-rumored sixth man. Cumming is a contributing editor of The Week magazine.

How did you first get interested in the Cambridge Spy Ring, and what led you to write a book about them?

I guess it began with the movie "Another Country", which came out midway through the 1980s. I watched it as a teenager while studying at the same school that Guy Burgess had attended—Eton College. Rupert Everett plays Burgess as a louche, iconoclastic schoolboy at war with the Eton hierarchy; the story works incredibly well as a metaphor for his later career, and also explores his homosexuality, which, of course, was illegal in that period. The film also features a supporting role by the young Colin Firth. It's illustrative of the embarrassment the Cambridge spies caused to the British Establishment that Eton declined to allow the film to be shot at the school.

In our last interview with you, you reported that your research materials for The Trinity Six included some previously unpublished materials on one of the Cambridge Spies, Anthony Blunt. What did you come across in there that changed your view of the spy ring or shaped this novel?

I got lucky. I came into possession of an archive about Blunt's life that contained his Death Certificate, his last Will & Testament as well as various letters and documents written by people who had known him, both during the war and while he was working as an academic at the Courtauld Institute in London. The archive didn't change my view of the Cambridge spies per se, but it did inspire the plot of The Trinity Six. In the book, the hero, Sam Gaddis, is an academic who is handed a vast archive of intelligence material relating to the KGB and the NKVD. The archive contains the clue that unlocks the final secret of the Sixth Man.

As you researched them, did you come to particularly like or dislike any of the Cambridge Five?

I was always quite fond of Burgess, probably for no better reason that that he has been played with such brio by various actors down the years. Tom Hollander was terrific as Burgess, for example, in the BBC series "Cambridge Spies". Those that knew him speak of a man with immense charm, a steel-trap intellect and real ideological conviction, but there’s no doubt that he could also be extremely arrogant and reckless. I think there is something really compelling about Burgess, not least his appetites for sex, alcohol and intrigue. In many ways he is a tragic figure. The others—Blunt and Philby, in particular—leave me cold. In The Trinity Six, somebody describes Philby as a "sociopath" and I think that’s fair description. Blunt had many admirers at the Courtauld, but I suspect that he was utterly ruthless and self-serving, at bottom a cold and calculating snob. Maclean and Cairncross remain the most opaque to me. There's a great biography still to be written about Maclean. I hope somebody does it.

How long did it take you to write The Trinity Six? Did this one involve more background research than your previous books?

Not as much as Typhoon, which was a swamp of research and very hard work. The Trinity Six took me to Berlin, to Vienna, but those trips were not as intense as my various journeys to Shanghai and Beijing for Typhoon. Above all with The Trinity Six, I tried to have fun with the legend of the Cambridge Spies. The book is not a historical document; it's a thriller. Its primary purpose is to entertain.

If, after The Trinity Six, a reader wanted more on the Cambridge spies, which book(s) would you recommend (fiction or non-fiction)?

There are so many. Yuri Modin's My Five Cambridge Friends is fascinating (Modin was their final KGB "Controller" in London). Tom Bower’s biography of Sir Dick White, The Perfect English Spy is also very good on the secret history of the period. Professor Christopher Andrew's The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5 is full of insights into the Cambridge ring. The best biography is undoubtedly Antony Blunt: His Lives, Miranda Carter's magisterial study of Blunt. Philby's memoir, My Silent War, is one of the most boring books I've ever read.

Do you think there really was a "sixth man"?

At Trinity Hall or Trinity College, Cambridge, in the 1930s, who was known to the other five? Almost certainly not. But were there other Soviet assets in the UK passing secrets back to Moscow? Undoubtedly. Some of them have been exposed, but others may have gone to their graves with their identities still intact.

Is there still much we haven't learned about Cold War-era spying activities, or has most of that now come to light?

A lot of it has come to light thanks to books such as The Mitrokhin Archive and to the work of historians in both Russia and the West. But some Cold War secrets will always remain hidden. It's no coincidence that the recent official history of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) ends in the late 1940s. Too many of the principle players are still alive. If their identities or activities were exposed, the impact on their families could be devastating.

What are you reading now?

My new book is partly set in France, so I am enjoying Lucy Wadham's The Secret Life of France very much. I'm also reading Ian McEwan's Solar, which is extremely funny and enormously erudite. You expect erudition from McEwan, but not necessarily amazing comic setpieces. So many people have recommended Ben Macintyre's Agent ZigZag, the story of Eddie Chapman, a double agent in WWII, that I have finally bought a copy.

Last time you were interviewed for LibraryThing you said your 2010 New Years' Resolution was to go back and finish books you'd started reading. Were you successful?

I was successful! I went back to Brideshead Revisited, and absolutely loved it. The next one on my list—I'm ashamed to say—is The Grapes of Wrath. Started it, was blown away by the first few chapters, put it down. Go figure.

Can you tell us a little bit about your next book?

Of course. Here's the "pitch": Just weeks before she is due to take up her position, the first female head of MI6 disappears without trace. An ex-MI6 officer sets out to find her and uncovers an extraordinary secret buried in her distant past.

Sounds great! I know I'll be looking forward to it.

—interview by Jeremy Dibbell