For English of a certain age - and possibly for those from other countries - the phrase 'the third man' and the triumvirate of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald McLean (until the eventual flight to Moscow of Philby, it was simply Burgess and McLean) have a certain resonance.
In later years the trio expanded to include a knight of the realm who eventually rose to become the Queen of England's art expert - something of an about-turn for a traitor - and is also said to have included one John Cairncross as 'the fifth man', although that is still in dispute.
Over the years, of course, and with changing geopolitical obsessions and problems the Cambridge spies attract less interest if only because Islamic State/Isil/IS/Isis and various other offshoots of Al Qaeda have been passed the mantle of 'the enemy' and, well, it was all 55 years ago. We have new 'spies' and their stories to get excited about.
All four (or five) spies have an interesting story to tell and to this day it is difficult to establish quite why the products of England's privileged class should have decided to bite the hand which fed them. Blunt, certainly, will have wanted to undo his past, if only because the social position he attained as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures was one which the old queen enjoyed a great deal. Philby seems, since his childhood in India where until the age of five he spoke both English and Urdu fluently and daily played with the children of his parents servants, to have suffered from a kind of split personality - I don't mean that in any medical sense - and had no difficulty hobnobbing with wealthy colleagues down in the club before meeting his controller and sending other colleagues to certain death. He was said to have been a real charmer so perhaps he was simply a sociopath who could not empathise.
Anther Country is about Guy Burgess, also like Blunt homosexual, and if you don't know much about him, the film's rather too neat explanation of why he became a traitor seems a tad glib. But in fact Burgess was nothing if not superficial. He seems to have been the least ideologically inspired of the Cambridge Four and, being a huge drinker, was a constant source of concern to the others and his Soviet controllers that he would while drunk give the game away.
He and McLean were the first to break cover and head for Soviet Russia when it seemed likely that McLean, a diplomat in Britain's Washington embassy, was about to be unmasked. It has often been suggested that Burgess need not have fled: no one was onto him and his treachery was only discovered once he had hightailed it to Moscow.
Some even suggest that he fully expected to return to Britain, though what he thought might be made of his actions back in London only the Lord knows. Certainly, he didn't take to Moscow life and (according to Wikipedia) had all his clothes tailored in London's Savile Row and shipped to him in Moscow.
The other notable aspect of Another Country is its portrayal of life at an English public school (the name, helpfully for Americans we give some of our private schools). The film takes place in the Thirties so I can't comment on whether aspects of such a school are exaggerated. But I attended a Roman Catholic public school (as a boarder) for five years in the Sixties and I can confirm that many of the absurdities prevailed, as did the rigid hierarchy of boys. We were still being caned for the silliest of reasons - though we called it being beaten - though in the more enlightened Sixties this could no longer be done by prefects.
The film takes place in the summer term when the air was sufficient balmy for the boys to take midnight walks or meet for midnight trysts. I remember many pleasant afternoons lying in the sunshine under a tree, doing nothing but gazing through the leaves into a blue sky. But I also remember the sheer misery of having to bathe and shower in cold water - not for any character building but because the school was too tight-fisted to get the hot water system modernised and repaired. I remember the goddam awful pigswill which we were served up as 'food', and the almost frightening speed with which violence could erupt for no very good reason. Oh, and I also remember all the talk of 'minnows' and boys that someone 'fancied' though not of it, thank God came my way.
So I suspect Another Country holds a certain attraction for its portrayal of the kind of life lived at such a school, although a portrayal now long outdated - corporal punishment is no longer legal at any school. The story is rather slight, the boys rather too articulate, speaking as they do as characters might in a play or a film. Or perhaps as I am now well beyond the age they were, I simply can't remember how young folk talk and talked.
The explanation as to what decided Guy Burgess/Bennett to choose the dark side and betray his country - because he had been cheated out of the bauble he craved more than any other - was, perhaps, a touch to pat. There again the real Guy Burgess was such a loose cannon who didn't seem to believe much for very long anyway, perhaps it really was like that. The film is, perhaps, best viewed as a well-made period piece.
