The Red and the Blue: Intelligence, Treason and the Universities

by Andrew Sinclair

‘Brilliant and disturbing’ – The Sunday Times Cambridge University between the wars was a clash of two Science and Art. On the one hand, there was the brilliant Cavendish Laboratory physicists who split the atom and later discovered the genetic secrets of life. They believed in making their research available to all, even scientists in enemy counties such as Russia, until the start of the Cold War. On the other hand, the were the visionary intellectuals, epitomised by the Apostles, the secret society which so profoundly influenced the economics, literature, politics and philosophy of this century. Their ideas were secret and controlled. This book provides a fresh insight into the activities of the Cambridge spies, tracing the development of the ‘two cultures’, their eventual conflict and how it led to startling changes that have transformed our world. Andrew Sinclair casts a new perspective over their activities and compares them to those of their contemporaries in the university’s experimental laboratories. He contrasts the Cambridge ethos in the 1930s with that of the 1950s, when he himself was at Trinity. He uses the microcosm of the university since 1918 to examine the eventual clash of the ‘two cultures’, and to study the important changes that have altered our world, in particular in Intelligence — its discoveries, morale, organization and uses.  ‘Both useful and entertaining — useful in that it compendiously summarises and brings up to date much other work on the Cambridge traitors, and entertaining because of the sharpness and elegance of his writing’ – Daily Telegraph ‘A brave and witty attempt to place the Cambridge Comintern within a much broader historical context’ — The Spectator Andrew Sinclair went up to Trinity College at the time of the Suez crisis, Cambridge, where he took a double first in History and wrote the famous Cambridge novel My Friend Judas. He was nominated as a member of the Apostles, but was not accepted, supposedly because he would not keep the society’s oath of secrecy. Sinclair returned to Cambridge to take his doctorate and became a Founding Fellow of Churchill College, where he was director of Historical Studies. He went on to direct the film version of the Dylan Thomas story Under Milk Wood, and won the Somerset Maugham Prize for his book The Better The Emancipation of the American Woman. Sinclair has also written biographies of Jack London, Bob Dylan, John Ford and Francis Bacon, among others, and has authored several works of fiction.

Genres: History

200 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Andrew Sinclair was born in Oxford in 1935 and was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. After earning a Ph.D. in American History from Cambridge, he pursued an academic career in the United States and England. His first two novels, written while he was still at Cambridge, were both published in 1959: The Breaking of Bumbo (based on his own experience in the Coldstream Guards, and later adapted for a 1970 film written and directed by Sinclair) and My Friend Judas. Other early novels included The Project (1960), The Hallelujah Bum (1963), and The Raker (1964). The latter, also available from Valancourt, is a clever mix of Gothic fantasy and macabre comedy and was inspired by Sinclair’s relationship with Derek Lindsay, the pseudonymous author of the acclaimed novel The Rack (1958). Sinclair’s best-known novel, Gog (1967), a highly imaginative, picaresque account of the adventures of a seven-foot-tall man who washes ashore on the Scottish coast, naked and suffering from amnesia, has been named one of the top 100 modern fantasy novels. As the first in the ‘Albion Triptych’, it was followed by Magog (1972) and King Ludd (1988).

Sinclair’s varied and prolific career has also included work in film and a large output of nonfiction. As a director, he is best known for Under Milk Wood (1972), adapted from a Dylan Thomas play and starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Sinclair’s nonfiction includes works on American history (including The Better Half: The Emancipation of the American Woman, which won the 1967 Somerset Maugham Award), books on Dylan Thomas, Jack London, Che Guevara, and Francis Bacon, and, more recently, works on the Knights Templar and the Freemasons.

Sinclair was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1972. He lives in London.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is at once a history and a sociology of some the Soviet spies in the UK during WWII and into the cold war as well as a meditation on C.P. Snow's famous "Two Cultures" thesis. The spies Sinclair focuses on are those associated closely with Cambridge University's famous Apostles society and more distantly with the Bloomsbury circle: Blunt, Burgess, Maclean, Philby et alia. Contrasted to these groups, made up almost entirely of students in the humanities, are the scientists of Cambridge's Cavendish laboratories, those substantially responsible for nuclear and thermonuclear weapons.

as the above suggests, Sinclair's book weaves together several strands of material. The final picture, so far as spying goes, is his conclusion that the ones responsible for the Soviet bomb were the physicists, an international group inclusive of known communists, most of them working quite openly within their related disciplines. The Cambridge humanists who actually did spy for the Soviets were incapable of understanding any atomic secrets they may have come upon and, in fact, were almost entirely insignificant in what they transmitted compared to the politically naive physicists.

Most broadly, the book is a history of the English class system from the late Victorian to the contemporary era, a period which began with Oxbridge (Oxford & Cambridge Universities) dominance and ended with "red-brick" colleges throughout the island, a period which began with "class" stuggle reflected even within the ruling elites and ended with a mild social democracy, a period which began with science being a free global endeavour and ended with many sciences becoming captive to black budgets and the security state.

This is not an exhaustive history. It is more a lengthy reflective essay.

[Michael Bully · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great insight into the historical and cultural background to the Cambridge Spies. The writer looks at the Bloomsbury Set with its Cambridge University connections and the The Apostles at Cambridge University, the secret undergraduate society, an elite within an elite. With the rise of post World War 1 disenchantment , frustration directed against the University Anglican establishment , along with the prevalence of all male bisexual /homosexual cliques at a time when homosexuality was illegal, radicalism merged with a culture of secrecy.
This book then really develops -stressing that whilst the more Arts orientated Bloomsbury Set and Apostles are well known, the radicalism of the Scientists gets overlooked.
The Soviet scientist Peter Kapista, who helped developed the USSR H bomb programme, arrived in Cambridge in 1921. Kapista Club developed , meeting every Tuesday, with some ground breaking scientific research in the field of the neutron, and accelerating charged particles. The author's case is that this changed History on a much greater scale than the antics of the more famous Apostles.
" Yet the Apostles had the gift of the pen and power of the word. They backed into publicity,Their clandestine doings were to be come famous. Along with their associates in Bloomsbury, rarely in the filed of human endeavour has so much been written about so few who achieved so little. As for the Kapista Club, rarely in the filed of human discovery has so little been written about so few who achieved so much. "
And this contact between the scientists of Britain and Soviet Russia certainly has been overlooked.
By 1933 the Communist Party of Great Britain had some 20,000 members. The Socialist Club at Cambridge University had a 1,000 members with a quarter of these being Communist. The writer's case is that a growth in the rise of sympathy for the Left and the notion that scientific discovery needed to be shared stimulated the exchange of ideas on an international level.An affinity with the USSR was declared by such luminaries as the biologist Jack Haldane and biochemist Joseph Needham .
Peter Kapista was detained on his annual visit to the Soviet Union in 1934 and not allowed to return to his laboratory at Cambridge University. However the Spanish Civil War, with USSR cast as the supporter of Democratic Spain maintained the connection between the Cambridge University Left and Communism. From this milieu came Burgess, Maclean, and Philby.
The writer portrays the confusion created by the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 : Stalin ordered that refugee Communists and Jews should be handed over to the Nazi regime, including two physicists Alex Wiessburg and Fiesl Hautermans, who had assisted Cambridge scientist Patrick Blackett. Yet the Cambridge University Left chose to ignore the implications of the Pact when it came to the future for scientists.
With the Soviet Union becoming an ally, information could be shared again; this writer observes:
" Just as the abandoned war wives put many prostitutes out of business, so the plethora of ordinary Communists giving information to their war ally made Soviet agents almost superfluous during the last years of the war ."
But the Cold War would see the Cambridge Spies coming into their element......And makes up the second half of the book.
Ultimately the book's strength is the pre-Cold War section showing the affinity that existed between Cambridge University and the Soviet Union. Combines historical fact and anecdote well. Critical of how the University Soviet sympathisers were prepared to ignore the brutality of the USSR towards its own dissidents including the persecution of homosexuals and the millions of dead in the 1930's Ukraine, this book adds so much to the more familiar accounts of the Cambridge Spies