Stalin’s Apostles: The unputdownable true story of the Cambridge spies and the making of the Soviet Empire

by Antonia Senior

STALIN'S APOSTLES is a radical new look at the way five people allowed their obsession with Communist ideology to overshadow any sense of morality or decency - or loyalty to their country. Why did these gilded, charming men, blessed with brains, and beauty and opportunities, choose to betray their country?
Using recently declassified files, STALIN'S APOSTLES explores as never before the treachery of Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, John Cairncross and Keeper of the Queen's Pictures Anthony Blunt, all radicalised while at Cambridge University in the 1930s. Their clandestine supply of British and US intelligence material gave Stalin an inside track on US and British decision-making until the implosion of the spy-ring in May 1951. There was barely a secret, barely a decision made, that Stalin did not know about, thanks to his Cambridge spies, and his networks in the United States. The Five became tools in Stalin's imperial scheme, responsible directly and indirectly for the death of thousands of men and women fighting against Soviet domination.
Shielded for so long by the British Establishment, four of the five were never prosecuted for their crimes. As STALIN'S APOSTLES reveals, they were exposed as much by their own incompetence as by forensic investigation by the CIA, MI5 or MI6. And in time another dictator emerged as ruthless as Stalin, but with an even greater desire to establish a Russian Empire that would threaten Western democracy. The legacy of the Cambridge Five is not only in the graveyards of eastern Europe, but at the heart of Putin's Kremlin.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Espionage, Politics, Russia, Audiobook, Biography

525 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 26, 2026

About the author

Antonia Senior is a writer and journalist. After many years at The Times, she is now freelance. She writes columns, book reviews and features for various national publications, including The Times, the Guardian and the Financial Times. Antonia lives in London with her husband and two children.

Reviews

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is by far one of the most frustrating books I have ever read. That's not Antonia Senior's fault, though! She has done a wonderful job with Stalin's Apostles. However, reading about the sheer incompetence of nearly everyone in the narrative is mind-blowing. This includes the actual apostles! They were just lucky enough to be going against governments that were completely asleep at the wheel.

For the uninitiated, the Cambridge Five were five communists who would ultimately rise to the highest levels of British government and society while filtering all the biggest secrets to Stalin. Stalin, you may know, is one of the most ruthless and disgusting mass murderers in human history. Needless to say, this narrative is certainly not going to make the apostles look like, well, the actual Apostles.

The five men — Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, and John Cairncross — would be active for decades. They would directly lead to the death of many partisans trying to break into the Iron Curtain. While Senior is not sympathetic to these men for obvious reasons, she keeps a mostly neutral tone on them. That said, she doesn't need to editorialize much to make them look bad between the backstabbing, severe alcoholism, narcissism, and spousal abuse. Perhaps being a spy is bad for your mental health?

Senior makes this read like a novel and it flies by. You may be pulling your hair out in frustration, but you will still enjoy the reading part of it.

(This book was provided as an advanced reader copy by NetGalley and PublicAffairs.)

[Adam Coombs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review of advanced reader copy received from Netgalley

The Apostles at Cambridge University is a secret society founded in 1820 as an exclusive club for its male only membership to debate and discuss questions ranging from the existence of God to the nature of truth. Its biblical inspired name comes from the fact that there were twelve original members, just as there were 12 apostles of Jesus. Meeting on a Saturday night, members ate sardines (whales in society jargon) on toast and drank coffee then a pre-selected speaker would deliver a paper on a specific topic. Following the presentation members would debate and discuss the issue and then vote on a question. After the vote lots were then drawn to determine next week’s agenda.

A number of prominent Cambridge students have been society members, among them economist John Maynard Keynes, novelist E.M. Forster and political theorist, author, and husband of Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf. Yet the Apostles society is probably best known for its most infamous members, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross. These three men worked as spies for the Soviet Union and from the late 1930s until the early 1950s passed secret intelligence to their Soviet handlers. These three, along with fellow Cambridge alumni Kim Philby and Donald Maclean, formed the most infamous spy ring in British history; the Cambridge Five.

The story of these five men and their betrayal of their country is the focus of the new book by journalist and podcaster Antonia Senior. The title Stalin’s Apostles is drawn from the links between the Cambridge Five and the Apostles society at their alma matter. Yet it also conveys what Senior sees as the level of devotion that these men had to the political agenda of the Soviet dictator. The book is divided into seven parts but these correspond to three periods of time. Parts one and two cover the men’s recruitment and infiltration of the British Government prior to the Second World War. Parts three, four and five examine the five’s wartime activities while the shorter final two sections detail the early Cold War activities and the final unravelling of the spy ring, including Burgess, Maclean, and ultimately Philby’s, flights to Moscow.

At its core this book is a Second World War spy thriller. The first sections set up the wartime drama and the final two parts conclude the story and provide the action packed denouement, but the real substance comes in Senior’s detailed depictions of how the five men fed reams of high value intelligence back to the Soviet Union. Senior is a talented writer and she ensures that the book remains exciting and engaging throughout. Additionally, her work is exceptionally well researched and the author draws on a number of archival sources to make her arguments. She clearly has a deep knowledge and passion for her subject and it is evident in her writing.

Despite the detailed descriptions of how, when and where the five passed secrets to their Soviet handlers, this book is not the work of a dispassionate historian coldly assessing the facts. As Senior argues throughout the book, these men knowingly betrayed their country and its allies resulting in real human suffering. The author does not shy away from moral judgments on the men’s actions. As she demonstrates in an early section of the book, by the time the Second World War started, the five would have been well aware of the brutal nature of Stalin’s regime. Yet they continued to work for him. Senior also outlines the consequences of these actions in detail. The most famous example is Maclean’s role in passing atomic secrets to the USSR but her best and most affecting analysis comes when discussing Poland and the Baltic States. She demonstrates how during Allied negotiations with the USSR regarding the future of these states, the intelligence the five spies gave the Soviets resulted in real suffering for many Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians.

The presence of Stalin in the title reveals that the Soviet dictator will be a key character in the book. In Senior’s presentation of the story, the Cambridge Five worked for Stalin and sought to advance his political agenda. She even goes so far as to claim, backed only by circumstantial evidence, that intelligence passed on to the Soviet Union ended up on Stalin’s desk and influenced his decision making. While, when it comes to the Yalta Conference and Maclean’s intelligence regarding the British Government’s position on the Post-war order, this argument could well be correct, Senior does not provide the proof. Without access to Russian archives (and even then) such a claim is impossible to substantiate. Granted, on a certain level, equating the Soviet Union as a whole with Joseph Stalin makes sense. The Soviet leader was such a dominating personality and he undoubtedly did exercise more unilateral power than other Allied leaders such as American President Franklin D. Roosevelt or British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. While Roosevelt and Churchill operated in democratic systems with checks and balances, Stalin did not have these constraints. Yet the Soviet system was still a complex machine where other power brokers in both the military and the intelligence agencies held tremendous power.

What is particularly missing from the work is a discussion of Soviet intelligence institutions and practices. The most glaring omission is that Senior never discusses the division between different Soviet intelligence gathering agencies. The most important division for the period is between Soviet foreign military intelligence (GRU) and the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union (NKVD and later the MGB then the KGB). During the Second World War the GRU and NKVD operated separately. This division is why when Igor Guzenko, a cypher clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa defected with a trove of intelligence, the Cambridge Five were unaffected by these revelations. Guzenko provided GRU sourced intelligence while the Five spied for the NKVD. While reducing the Soviet Union’s decision making to one man is a useful shortcut for the writer who wanted to focus on the five British spies, this approach simplifies a story that is much more complex and ultimately more interesting.

Flattening and simplifying the complexities of the Cambridge Five case is necessary given the scope and scale of their spying. Senior’s ambition to tackle the entire story of all five members of the spy ring is admirable. She has spoken in pre-release interviews of how Kim Philby attracts the most attention resulting in the important role the other four played being obscured by Philby’s bright light. Yet when writing about these men, comparisons will inevitably be drawn between Senior’s work and Ben Macintyre’s A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal from 2014. Macintyre’s book was so successful it was converted into a six episode TV mini-series by ITV in 2022.

Reading A Spy Among Friends I was left with wanting to know more about the other four members of the spy ring. Macintyre focuses on Philby and while his contemporaries appear in the narrative, they are secondary characters. Senior, by contrast, equally focuses on all five. It was her inclusive approach that drew me to her book in the first place. Having completed the book I now question whether the story is too big to be told in one work. With the luxury of focusing on one character, the Kim Philby in Macintyre’s work is a vivid character who jumps off the pages. Without similar space, Senior’s descriptions of the Cambridge Five feels relatively flat. Especially when espionage and betrayal are such personal and idiosyncratic actions, being able to delve into the subject’s personality and history really helps the reader to at least partially understand why they chose to take the dramatic step of betraying their country.

The lack of depth to each character forces Senior to rely on broader, sweeping explanations for these men’s actions, such as allegiance to Stalin or commitment to communist ideology. While these explanations may be superficially true, deeper character studies of committed spies often reveal that their motivations are much more tangled and driven by the personal as well as the political. After finishing Stalin’s Apostles I am left with the impression that Senior would have been better served focusing on one or two of the five and presenting their story. She certainly has the research and writing ability to do so. A more intimate portrait of one would probably reveal much more about Second World War and early Cold War espionage than a broader survey of the Cambridge Five.

Rating: 3.5 Stars out of 5

[Mervyn Whyte · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read umpteen books about the Cambridge spies, but this is the first one that has really given me a sense of the consequences of what they did.

A lot of books about the Five focus on the boozing, the parties, the privileged backgrounds, the social connections and the intrigue. At times, they almost make it sound like a great adventure—a kind of intellectual jape played by brilliant, rebellious young men. But behind all the glamour and secrecy were the hard facts of what spying for Stalin actually meant: executions, gulags, torture and unimaginable suffering.

That is what makes this book so powerful. For Philby, Blunt and Burgess especially, it often seemed like a thrilling game—a dangerous but exciting challenge, like naughty schoolboys playing at something they didn't fully understand. Except they did understand. They were repeatedly confronted with evidence of Stalinist brutality, yet remained almost completely deaf to criticism of the Soviet system and to the suffering caused in its name.

For decades they continued their deadly game, and, for the most part, they seemed to enjoy it. What is particularly galling is how few of them could face the consequences when the truth finally emerged. Maclean perhaps deserves some qualification, and maybe Philby to an extent, but the others certainly struggled with the reality of their choices. Most of them had no desire to live in the country they had spent years defending. Indeed, Blunt reportedly made it clear that he would rather kill himself than move to Russia.

He might have spared a thought for the millions of people who had no choice but to live under that system—and whose lives were made immeasurably worse by the actions of people like him.

Senior has done a first-rate job here. Her research is excellent, but what impressed me most is her ability to put the human consequences back at the centre of the story. This is not just another tale of spies, secrets and clever Cambridge graduates; it is a reminder of the real-world damage caused by their decisions.

My only reservation is the suggestion regarding Harry Hopkins being a Soviet spy. I remain unconvinced by that argument.

For the record, I read the paperback edition of this book, not the Kindle edition listed here. I couldn't find the paperback version on Goodreads.

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is common in the modern age to read stories, watch movies, or hear of countless examples of men and women who have risked all to help their nation, their people, or their cause by spying on a foreign nation, an enemy, or a threat. Their success stories are perhaps no more inspiring than the stories of their failures, for we can see that, either by winning or losing, they were serving a good cause. And while they may have failed in their mission, their inclusion in the annals of history signifies that they did not fail at the mission. But how does our moral narrative fare when, instead of examples of greatness, we hear stories of debauchery? What happens when, instead of spies protecting their nation, we hear of spies selling information to another nation at the expense of their own?

This is exactly what Antonia Senior’s new, penetrating look at the Cambridge Five does. In Stalin’s Apostles, Senior shows how these five men, young and idealistic in the beginning, were brought into the folds of Soviet intelligence and then proceeded, over the next two decades, to funnel information to their Russian bosses through a World War and the beginning of the decades-long Cold War.

Senior does not give us a typical biography. Although it broadly follows the lives and fortunes of Anthony Blunt, John Cairncross, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby, and Guy Burgess, this is a biography not of a man, or of men, but of a faith. This faith was a faith in communism—in the ability of man, through his own efforts, to bring heaven down to man—and it was this religious zealotry that drove these five to do the unthinkable.

1930s England was a time when two competing perceptions of the world had collided. One of them was in its death spiral; the other was skyrocketing in popularity. It was ironic, but the idealism of war that had led so many young men to their deaths in the First World War—the idealism, as it were, of the real—was giving way to the realism of the ideal. This realism of the ideal, which saw the problems created by nationalism, war, and the economic effects of the Industrial Revolution, was nonetheless no less idealistic than the patriotism of the pre-war era. The only difference was that this new and renewed confidence was not in the nation-state but in the nationless state—utopia.

Gone with the confidence, patriotism, and relative stability of the Victorian age were also the religious convictions and ethical mores of the same. While any age has moral problems with which it must deal—child slavery in the nineteenth century, the deviancy of the aristocracy in the early nineteenth century—a rejection of the foundations of these mores led to a wholesale rejection of the mores themselves, and Senior chronicles, with devastating simplicity, the effects of this abandonment. Two of the Cambridge Five were the sons of devoutly religious fathers—and religious in twentieth-century England meant Christian. Yet none of the five would maintain even a semblance of this faith, instead swallowing the alluring hook of utopian Marxism—hook, line, and sinker. Further, the mores holding society in place were also thrown out with Christian belief: four of the five spies were deviant homosexuals who, besides spying on their governments, engaged in some of the most promiscuous behavior imaginable, from marital abuse to affairs with countless men and women, and with each other, to the sponsoring of male brothels.

Yet we would be in error to suppose that this rejection of traditional faith was a rejection of faith. While it is all too common today to think of people in terms of the “religious” and “secular” labels, and to think of Stalin’s regime, Mao’s China, or Fidel’s Cuba as secular states, this is both an egregious misunderstanding and a dangerously naive view. For the Cambridge Five, their rejection of faith was not a rejection of the Christian eschatology, but a stripping of its theology in its entirety; it was an attempt to preserve, in atheistic form, many of the moral goods that Christianity had once and again asserted.

Senior, as a secular journalist, only just hints at these realities. It would perhaps have been a stronger argument had she made these things explicit, linking the lack of Christian theology with its replacement, but this lack of acknowledgement is understandable. Further, while it is perhaps not the goal of this book to explain the causes of their actions as much as their consequences, it would have been helpful had the author spent considerably longer explaining the ideological appeal of communism, to which she alludes but which she never fully encapsulates.

And yet, unlike true Christianity, this new zealotry of the communist idealists was entirely unquestioning: a blind leap of faith instead of a reasoned acceptance of reality itself. Far more than the miracle of the Virgin Birth or any similar element of Christian theology, communism demanded of its adherents a genuinely irrational faith—one that required them to violate all their commitments in pursuit of its goal. In the late 1930s, the Cambridge Five’s faith was shaken by the show trials in Stalin’s USSR. The heroes they had quoted, modeled their lives after, and looked up to were now the enemies of the State they served. Bukharin, Zinoviev—even the five handlers themselves—were evidence of the fact that revolutions eat their own. And yet the Five helped eat them, or at least stood by passively while they were eaten, their commitment to Stalin’s regime neither marred nor affected. Telling themselves that it was for the defeat of fascism that Stalin had to do this, their loyalty still remained firm even when Stalin himself became Hitler’s principal ally, their arch-nemesis, through the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The worldview of these men was so zealous, so unthinking, so committed in spite of all else, that by the end of the 1940s, they themselves were actively involved in the betrayal of their own agents into the hands of the NKVD. Rebels in Eastern Europe, from Ukraine to Poland to Albania and Lithuania, working with British intelligence to undermine the Soviet system, were betrayed by the very people they were helping, their fates sealed by the demonic attributes of the oppressive communist dictatorship.

The slippery slope of Stalinism becomes evident through these pages. Like Lenin, who was, for all intents and purposes, deified after his death, Stalin was the god-man during his life. His word was infallible. To question him was to question the Soviet experiment; to question the Soviet experiment was to question the revolution; to question the revolution was to question and deny the principles that motivated it, which made one an enemy not only of the state but of mankind generally. Thus, Dostoevsky’s statement rings true: “Without God, all things are permitted”—if the new God, the state, allows it.

Senior’s key strength is not simply in showing the ideological motivators behind the Cambridge Five, though this goes far further than other historians, some of them Soviet apologists, have done. Instead, her brilliance is captured in the fact that she puts a face on the consequences of their actions. Telling the story of the people inside the Iron Curtain, who had survived Hitler’s Nazi tyranny only to fall into the hands of their would-be liberators, makes the reader sympathize with the plight of European resistance. Not only the reader, but also the leaders of the Western nations, who, perhaps for reasons of realpolitik, or perhaps out of actual concern—we do not know—understood the importance of these movements, are forced to come to terms with how best to help them. The strategy of containment was only part of it; the provision of resources, infiltration by agents, and intelligence support were all means by which these patriotic, pro-Western men and women risked everything and subsequently lost it. Why? Because of the Cambridge Five.

Of particular interest to modern readers should be the setting at the beginning of the story. Our own conception of spies works something like this: a rival nation sends its intelligence agents to infiltrate a rival intelligence agency of a different nation. Perhaps, with promises of money, a better future, or some other reward, they succeed in turning an agent or two and thus obtain information critical to their own government. We may be forgiven for thinking that this was the case with the Cambridge Five, but it wasn’t. The communist method for gaining power and influence is far deeper and far more insidious, as we have seen in decades prior. All five men were recruited while still in college. None of them was in an influential position, and there was no reason to believe that they ever would be. Later on, after distancing themselves from communism for the purpose of casting off suspicion, the Five would dismiss their college-days socialism as youthful idealism—but if it was youthful idealism, then they were always young, for they never lost it.

Indeed, Senior points out that agents who are in it for the money can be turned simply with the offer of more money. Agents who are in it for the excitement or novelty will soon find it boring, old, or simply too dangerous. But by choosing fanatically committed ideologues, the Soviets ensured that, barring a change in convictions, the communists would remain communist.

Using original and previously unearthed archival materials, Senior presents clear and undeniable proof—yes, proof—that the actions of the Five directly led not only to the betrayal of rebel groups but also to the rapid nuclearization of the Soviet Union. She convincingly points out that, were it not for Donald Maclean’s reading of communications between the President of the United States and Prime Minister Churchill, Russia would likely have been delayed by months, perhaps years, in the successful testing of its own nuclear weapon. This success, which gave the Cold War a new and more devastating potentiality, would not have been possible, or at least would not have occurred within its historical timeframe, without their aid.

As all stories do, this story has its end—and it is not a particularly glorious one for any of the Five. All of them passed through death into eternal death, from suffering into unending misery; broken and sick, having experienced the pleasures of the world for a season, their lives evoke the biblical lesson: “Be sure your sin will find you out.” Stunningly, all five managed to evade the justice system; none would face political or legal repercussions for their involvement. But while they were never convicted in a court of law, they stand convicted in the court of public opinion and, more reliably, in the court of the eternal, immutable law.

Perhaps the most celebrated of the Five, Kim Philby, whose statue stands in Prokhorovka, near the site of the Battle of Kursk, where his spying helped the Soviets defeat the Germans, provides the most striking example of this. His flight to Moscow, unexpected and unwanted, helped him escape the hangman’s noose or a judge’s verdict, but it hardly brought him the revered status for which he longed. A drunkard, forgotten by most and condemned by all, he had spent most of his adult life serving Soviet intelligence, yet his last years were not spent in his ideal utopia but in a living hell. Guy Burgess, noted for his witty and outrageous personality, was abandoned in Russia: no longer sought, an exile from the world in which he flourished.

[Francis Pellow]

it's not a subject that is new to me but even so it's always an astonishing story. no star rating as it was so heavily abrdiged on BBC radio 4 but very well done

[Rob Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt and Cairncross are familiar names, but Antonia Senior treats them as more than a rogues' gallery. She places the Cambridge Five in their world of interwar idealism, class privilege and clubland arrogance, then follows the damage their betrayals did as Stalin's empire took shape after the war. Well researched and briskly told, with a novelist's eye for character. Well-trodden ground, but the framing feels fresh.

[GS Seda · Rating 4 out of 5]

BookReview

“Stalin’s Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire’

By Antonia Senior

As war clouds gathered over Europe, barely two decades after the First World War, the continent seemed to be lurching towards another catastrophe. Three men—Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin—would soon find themselves locked in a struggle over what kind of Europe would emerge from the ruins. The stakes were immense: the defeat of Hitler was only part of the contest. What would happen to Poland? Who would control Eastern Europe? How far would the Western Allies go to protect countries that the Red Army was already advancing towards?

In Stalin’s Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire, Antonia Senior argues that Stalin approached these negotiations with an advantage his Western counterparts could scarcely have imagined. He knew where Britain was divided, what Washington feared, how far Whitehall might go over Poland, and where the Western Allies might eventually compromise. The source of that intelligence was five young English spies: Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross—the Cambridge Five.

I have long been fascinated by the Cambridge Five and wondered how different would this book be from the extensive literature already existing on the subject. Would it be another book in which the mechanics of counter-espionage and British intelligence failures dominate? Or, would it also focus on the personalities and psychology of the spies? Therefore, I was surprised when Antonia Senior tried to answer an altogether different but more consequential question: what did Stalin want from these men, and what did he do with the information they supplied? Ultimately, this turns out to be less a story about clever spies than about the uses of intelligence, the power of ideology, and the ability of intelligent people to live with facts that contradict what they desperately want to believe.

What struck me most was how deliberate the Soviet operation was. In the mid-1930s, Soviet intelligence began identifying bright young Communists and sympathisers at Britain’s leading universities, encouraging them to sever their visible links with Communism and build respectable careers inside the British establishment. MI5 describes the Five as “possibly the ablest group of foreign agents ever recruited by Soviet intelligence.” Senior shows how brilliantly that strategy worked.

What did Stalin want from them? More than secrets. He wanted to know how his adversaries thought: what Britain feared, where its divisions lay, what Washington was saying, and how far the Western powers were prepared to go. The Five gave Moscow intimate knowledge of the negotiating environment before the negotiations even started.

The range of their access was astonishing. Maclean passed Foreign Office files and details of British negotiations; Cairncross routinely smuggled raw decryptions of high-level German communications out of Bletchley Park; and Philby penetrated the heart of British intelligence. Stalin knew about fuel shortages for the Royal Navy and the atomic bomb plans. Senior is at her most compelling when she follows the consequences of that penetration beyond London and Washington.

After the war, Britain and America tried to breach the Soviet-controlled world from within. Resistance movements were still fighting Soviet domination across the Baltic states and Ukraine. Western intelligence sought to establish contact with them, provide support, and insert agents behind the Iron Curtain. The aim was to keep alive resistance to Soviet rule and, in the event of another conflict, create networks that could work with the West.

This was where Philby’s prior knowledge became devastating. Information about Western operations was leaked to Soviet intelligence, allowing the MGB to intercept infiltrators. Through “radio games” and other deception operations, it could dupe London into believing that it was communicating with genuine resistance networks when actually those networks had already been compromised. Agents were led ever deeper into traps to be subsequently liquidated.

The story of Juozas Lukša brings home what this meant. One of the most prominent Lithuanian resistance fighters to establish contact with the West, he was eventually lured and killed. His fate gives the tragedy a human face. Operation Valuable in Albania provides another example of Western attempts to support anti-Communist resistance being compromised.

The scale of the struggle was considerable. Senior estimates around 30,000 Forest Brothers in post-war Estonia; in Latvia the resistance reached 10,000–15,000 at its peak. Soviet records put Lithuanian partisan deaths at over 20,000 between 1944 and 1953. The numbers are a reminder that the intelligence passed by the Five was helping the Soviet security services destroy resistance to Soviet rule.

At this point I found myself returning to what is, for me, the book’s real question: why did these men remain loyal to Stalin even as the evidence of his brutality accumulated?

The answer lies partly in the world in which they came of age. The Five were privileged and highly educated, but they were also living through the Depression, the rise of fascism and the apparent failures of liberal democracy. Communism offered an explanation for the disorder around them, a sense of purpose, and the promise of a just world. They saw Communism as the great bulwark against fascism and believed in world revolution.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact therefore came as a profound shock. Stalin had apparently made common cause with Hitler. Like Communists elsewhere, the Five were aghast. Yet they eventually rationalised the Pact as a clever tactical manoeuvre: Stalin was buying time and preparing for the inevitable confrontation with Hitler. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, they felt vindicated.

The harder test came with the Great Terror. By then there was ample evidence of collectivisation, famine, forced labour, executions and the purges. Yet the Five did not recoil. As Senior puts it, “It was not ignorance that kept the Five loyal in the face of the Terror; it was an act of revolutionary resolve.”

This, to me, is the most unsettling aspect of the book. Their ideology gave them a way justify Stalin’s atrocities as the price of revolution; Soviet expansion as liberation. The more they sacrificed—friendships, careers, reputation and personal integrity—the harder it became for them to admit that the cause itself might have been wrong.

The British story ends in another paradox. All five betrayed their country, yet none was ever convicted. Senior’s account of more than two decades of MI5 investigation, including revelations from files released in 2025, suggests a more complicated story than simple political establishment protecting their own. Suspicion was strong, but evidence insufficient for prosecution. Anthony Blunt, the art historian, remained Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures and a knight until his exposure; his knighthood was subsequently revoked. Philby escaped to Moscow — Maclean and Burgess had already defected by then — where he was celebrated as a master spy. His face appeared on a Soviet stamp in 1990, and in 2023 Putin unveiled a statue of him near Kursk.

“None of the Five died happy, but all died free,” Senior writes. Three died in the Soviet Union and two in Britain.

I would recommend Stalin’s Apostles both to readers coming to the Cambridge Five for the first time and to those who already know their story. Senior makes the familiar story more disturbing—and, for that reason, more interesting.

Post Script: The Cambridge Five have had a remarkable afterlife in fiction—most notably in John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and John Banville’s The Untouchable, a fictionalised version of Anthony Blunt’s story. Graham Greene’s introduction to Philby’s memoir is another reminder of the strange fascination these men continued to exert.

[Aloma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. I really wanted to love it. It is definitely worth reading

However it is very academic. I wish it had gone more into the psychology of these men. I must admit that might not have been possible.

[John Morello · Rating 3 out of 5]

The question Antonia Senior never really answers is just who should be blamed for one of the most colossal intelligence screw ups in modern memory. But she does a great job, thanks to meticulous research and compelling writing, of laying the groundwork for a disaster in the making. The Cambridge Five...Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Donald MacLean, Guy Burgess and John Cairncross, came of age at Cambridge in the 1930s, as England and the rest of the world were still shell-shocked from World War 1, knee-deep in the misery created by the Great Depression, and anxious about the spread of Fascism. And while all of them were young and bright, with successful career paths awaiting them, they were radicalized by the things I just mentioned. Their ivory tower was not that far removed from the angst around them, and with the country seemingly riddled with agents from the Soviet Union (some attached to the embassy, but many others in country illegally), they were easy pickings for recruitment, convinced that a life of intrigue, deception, treachery and treason was a small price to pay to ensure the survival and the spread of what Moscow promised would be a worker's paradise. They closed their eyes to the brutality behind the curtain and plunged in. So, I suppose we could blame the environment The Five inhabited, as well as their own naiveté about what they were actually working for, and the cost in terms of blood and treasure and the damage they did. They labored in Stalin's employ from the mid-1930s, through World War 2, the critical early years of the Cold War, and in Philby's case, into the Sixties. They stole secrets by the briefcase full...Senior mentions on more than one occasion they'd leave their offices at night ( nearly all of them, especially Maclean, were working in government) with piles of sensitive documents to give to their handlers, who copied them so they could be returned the next day. No wonder Stalin knew that British and to a lesser degree US support for a post-war independent Poland or Baltic states free of Soviet domination was simply performative rhetoric, or just how far the Americans were progressing on a nuclear weapon. Even Yalta, supposedly the place where the Grand Alliance would hammer out a joint post war vision where self determination would be the watchword would fizzle since, thanks to stolen intelligence, Stalin was way ahead of the curve. The Cambridge Five were active even after the shooting stopped, alerting Stalin and his henchmen of Western plots to infiltrate the Iron Curtain to foment unrest. The number of men and women who were parachuted into or secretly delivered onto beaches in Soviet territory, into the waiting arms of secret police forces beggar the imagination. The betrayals went on, year after year, decade after decade. Finally, after years of damage, they were exposed. Some escaped to the Soviet Union. All escaped justice.
Fraser circles, but doesn't exactly put her finger on the real reasons this treachery was allowed to happen. How could people like this be placed in positions where they could do this sort of thing? There's no real discussion or criticism of vetting, or background checks or any other mechanism in place to ensure that whoever earned a security clearance would behave. They were part of the elite in British society. Their education and their connections defined them as 'good chaps.' Fellows, Philby and Maclean, at least, who were 'clubbable,' and allowed to enter those posh enclaves of leather chairs, rare scotch and private conversations. Conversations presumed to be confidential until the Five met with their handlers to spill what they learned.

"Stalin's Apostles" were raised in the very environment they hoped to destroy. And they almost did.

[Janine · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A captivating, psychologically probing spy saga” is Publishers Weekly’s description of Stalin’s Apostles. The book catalogues over twenty years of subterfuge in obtaining British secrets and how the spy game was played. But the story of five men’s callus betrayal of their country is so deeply disturbing and incomprehensible that Antonia Senior, the book’s author, sets out to correct the record and focus on the “hideous damage” these men did to the world and not on why they chose an ideology or how their class within British society drew them into anti-imperialism thinking or even the mythic stature the Russians have given to bolster Putin’s authoritarianism.

The Cambridge Five - Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, David Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross - go down in history as provocateurs and duplicitous rogues of the worst kind. From their boozy days at Cambridge to their boozy ends, these five did more to bring Stalin’s dark vision of communism to fruition and without ever checking into what that vision was - as written in this book the appalling number of people killed by Stalin and the vicious erasing of land and livelihood is heart wrenching to read. Prompted to obtain positions of prominence and influence in the British government or society especially during wartime, these men managed to do that, especially Maclean and Philby - Maclean as an important attaché and Philby as eventual head of MI5’s Soviet counterintelligence desk. But they were also bumbling at times. But the incredible amount of material they smuggled to the Soviets is daunting to read about and their malevolence is sobering.

Of particular note is the lack of security on all sides. Material could be taken home - there is a reference to John Cairncross picking up paper and stuffing it in his pants when he was at Bletchley Park. And of course during WWII everyone was focused on the Nazis not the Soviets who were allies. These men also displayed a cold disdain for lives lost by their treachery / after all it was about creating a world revolution which was supposed to take place in Britain and Germany to smaller countries were expendable.

The book is divided into seven sections each dealing with a period of the men’s journey in spying. The WWII years were the most interesting I believe. The author went into recently opened Albanian and Lithuanian archives to update the damage these five did to innocent lives of people fighting for their freedom. The Nazi years only shows how evil both sides were and how trapped people were in choosing a side - neither was a good one. One of Philby’s last acts before he defected was to expose David Cornwall (aka John Le Carré) as a British agent

The last years of these men’s lives were filled with loneliness, alcoholism and a soulless existence. A fitting end to men who gave no thought for others in their pursuit of personal ends.

This is an exceptional book. Highly recommend.

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gets a big old ding for something on a photo plate, then on one page near the plates pages. It gets further dings for falsehoods and anti-facts about items during WWII.

The first?

In a photo from the Tehran Conference, she says that Harry Hopkins was of "mixed loyalties." A few pages before, in text, she claims he was a "Soviet asset."

Please. About all serious historians think that Lawrence Duggan, not Hop, was "agent 19." Here in the US, nobody but Sean McMeekin, who comes off more and more as the historians' version of a troll, takes accusations inside America against Hop by the likes of George Racey Jordan.

As for the "roll-ups" of early infiltration attempts into Albania, Western Ukraine and the Baltics, with which the book opens? Operation Valuable was not a failure only due to the Cambridge Five. The USSR had gathered other information about it. What was really stupid was both the US and UK continuing the operation for four years.

To a lesser extent, this was true of the attempted incursions into Western Ukraine and the Baltics. (I have less familiarity with the latter.)

Vis-a-vis the Ukraine operations, Senior gets another big old ding for her handwaving, gaslighting, or whatever, about the Waffen SS Galicia Division. No, it really was all that on antisemitism and Nazi collaboration. The gaslighting and handwaving of today come from people who agree with NATO "badgering" Russia over Ukraine, to use Pope Francis' words. People like I assume Senior is.

The two big errors, Hopkins and this, are enough to make sure it can't rise above two stars, even if the narrative of how the Five were recruited, and the denouement at the end are both good. Senior also makes clear from the start her intent to spread the net beyond that, too.

I skimmed over most the WWII era stuff, figuring that, based on the Hopkins canard, it was oversold.

There are better Cold War and pre-Cold War spying books than this.

Side note: Yes, it wasn't directed at the USSR, but I find it interesting that none of the Five knew anything about either US or UK plotting and planning for the coup against Mossadegh.

==

Update: I kept grokking, and there's other whoppers. The biggest? Senior claims that Blunt and Burgess sending Russia info about D-Day "imperiled" the operation. Really? How? The odds of the Nazis intercepting a plane or ship with a diplomatic pouch, or intercepting and breaking code on a cable, were nil. Beyond that, other than details of the Pas de Calais deception, they were already expecting Overlord. They were just largely surprised that Ike pulled it off on June 6 weather.

Second is her claiming that Belarus, one of the founding republics, only became part of the USSR due to, and at the time of, the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact, is another howler.

I don't care how good the narrative is, or other insights are. I stopped grokking in the middle section at that point, and the rating drops to 1 star.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent account of the Cambridge Five - Kim Philby, Donald McLean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross. The five were Apostles, relating to a Cambridge student club, and indeed, there has always been something rather forgiving in much that has been written about these men. They are viewed through the lens of men of their class and background. Academically bright, flirting with communism in the thirties, comfortable in the old boys' network, the clubs and bars where those in intelligence felt safe recruiting from those of their own background. It was those from the working class who didn't play the game. Those trade unionist leaders, with a megaphone and an attitude. Not Kim Philby, surely, whose background was the same as so many others who were in espionage.

Antonia Senior, author and podcast host of Spy Masters, attempts to show how dangerous this attitude is. From attitudes at the time (why list that any of those men were members of a club known to support communism, or that one had married a known communist? Youthful indiscretions are best covered up so as not to ruin their careers...). Indeed, even now, some see members of the Cambridge Five as oddly romantic, who see their loyalty to a cause as somehow noble. Senior shows that these men were able to betray not only their (my) country but also themselves. They knew Stalin was responsible for many deaths - they assisted him and were involved in deaths themselves. Even if they didn't see the outcome, they knew what it might be and glibly held behind their ignorance.

This book tells of the Old Boys Network that is still so much in play today, visible in issues such as the Epstein files, where men of power, influence and wealth have avoided being brought to account for their involvement in crimes. It is somewhat like being in a Le Carre novel, where we learn of betrayal, of the disbelief that men seen as part of the establishment, glibly betrayed their country. Before World War II, during the war and during the Cold War. Of their recruitment, their active years in positions of power and influence, of their downfall. I found it an excellent read and recommend it highly.

[Andrew Culp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Antonia Senior believes the Cambridge Five spy ring have been treated too lightly and deserve harsher condemnation for betraying England during WW2 and the Cold War. In this book, she presents new evidence to prove her point.

I was completely unfamiliar with the Cambridge Five, so it was all new to me. Five Cambridge-educated Britons fell under the spell of communist ideology and repeatedly over many years betrayed their country to help Stalin and Soviet Russia.

Stalin during WW2 had spies everywhere in Britain, while Britain had none in Russia. It seems Britain took their alliance with Russia seriously, while Stalin never did. Meanwhile, the USSR was getting so much intel from Britain that they didn’t have enough people to sort through it all. They just took documents at random to send to Stalin and filed the rest away for later perusal, but they were often never even reviewed later.

Britain proved to be the only European country willing and able to resist Hitler, but then were woefully naive about Stalin. After they finally caught on that Stalin was spying on them, they created a branch of MI6 responsible for counter-Soviet intelligence operations, and put one of Stalin’s biggest spies in charge of it!

The mental gymnastics required of these spies was staggering. They continually received evidence of Stalin’s totalitarianism and brutality, but kept working towards replacing their evil capitalist system with Stalin’s communism.

For me, this brings new perspective to the Red Scare. Usually brought up as an example of right wing hysterical overreaction, akin to the Salem Witch Trials or the Spanish Inquisition, the fact is that Stalin had many spies at high levels of government feeding him secrets that legitimately imperiled western countries if the Cold War had ever turned hot.

[Maine Colonial · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a free digital advance review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

This deeply researched book follows the members of the Cambridge Five spy ring from their indoctrination, through their spying activities, which often betrayed resistors from Iron Curtain countries, to the several years they fell under suspicion due to increasing numbers of Soviet defectors, to their final years, which were usually liquor-soaked and lonely. These men—Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, John Cairncross, and Anthony Blunt—started out as dewy-eyed believers in Marxist theory and in the Soviet Union as a country living Marxist ideals. They continued to be true believers despite the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and Stalin’s terror. Some seemed to have doubts in their much later years, and certainly the three who fled to Moscow grew to despise their lives in the USSR, but these men mostly come across as overgrown, drunken boys who enjoyed the game of spying, the feeling of being in the middle of great events, and knowing more than others all around them.

If you’re familiar with the Cambridge Five, you won’t be shocked to read about how these men were able to slide smoothly into important government jobs despite their communist sympathies during their college years being known. They were from the right class, they knew people, and that’s what mattered. Author Senior explores the particular draw of communism to Cambridge intellectuals during the 1930s, and dives deep into the very British class attitudes, and machinations, particularly by Philby, that allowed him to evade exposure far longer than he should have.

An excellent read, both as history and an examination of deeply flawed personalities.

[Zoe Ngan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant book. I loved getting lost in this world of intrigue, moves, and countermoves, although unfortunately it had very real consequences for millions of people. 

Senior does an incredible job of humanising the spies so we see the world from their eyes. She captures how recanting Communism, to them, would be like abandoning their identity & social capital. She highlights the spies' Anglocentric exceptionalism & how their love of country coexisted with their betrayal. This latter contradiction is what stands out to me, partly because I saw their actions as betrayal while the spies saw their actions as patriotism.

This line between loyalty & self-deception was one of my favourite parts of the book. We see how Britain was imagined as the vanguard of world revolution, which allowed the spies to discount the Great Terror and Soviet starvation as “Russian (read: lesser) communism,” separate from the ideal they believed Britain could realise. Yet, despite this, they funnelled reams upon reams of intelligence from their government offices to their handlers.  

It was also interesting to see a broader "failure of the imagination" among British officials. To them, it was simply unfathomable to believe that well-connected, upper-class men ("good chaps") could betray their country so completely. 

[Eliza's Reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy smokes was this book a ride of intrigue, espionage, deception, drama and pure luck. Journalist Antonia Senior does an incredible job of weaving together this tapestry of characters who made up the Cambridge Five, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, John Cairncross, Kim Philby and Donald Maclean. Senior did a massive amount of deep diving research to tell the story of these men and how they were inspired to accept the offer to become a spy for the Soviet Union. It is so hard to believe that the British government were clueless that young men would spy for the USSR that even if you had declared yourself a follower of Marxism in your college days, that would not preclude you from getting in and rising to a high enough ranking position in government where you could receive sensitive or confidential information. It just blows my mind how all this took place and for how long it continued. I highly recommend this book if the Cold War interests you or you enjoy spy novels cause this reads like a fast pace thriller. If you liked the Hulu series The Americans, you will absolutely devour this novel. A 5/5 star!

Thank you, Antonia Senior and Public Affairs for providing this eARC via NetGalley for review.

[Peter McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Senior’s aim is to turn the Cambridge Five from a British story to an Eastern European story. A weak version of this thesis has to do with intentions: the main goal of the Five’s spying was to give Stalin control over Eastern Europe (and they willingly did their best for him, with eyes open to e.g. the purges and show trials). The virtue of Senior’s book is demonstrating this beyond doubt, more than justifying her moralising. But the more interesting thesis has to do with causation: Philby and friends made Stalin’s subjugation of Eastern Europe easier, or more total, than it would otherwise have been. Senior wanted to argue for this casual thesis, but I think her (justified) moral anger at the Five made her lose focus; the book did not give me sufficient reason to reject the alternative hypothesis that, once the Red Army was in place, Stalin could and would do as he pleased in Eastern Europe. But if this hypothesis were true, then the Five would be a British story: the fate of Eastern Europe was sealed with or without them, and their main impact was on Britain’s reputation and self-respect.

[Scott Martin · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Solid overview of the lives and actions of 5 of the greatest intelligence traitors in history. The Cambridge Five are legendary for what they were able to accomplish in betraying their country to support an ideology that was never quite what they thought it was. In retrospect, it seemed so obvious, but then you realize at the time that these five, even with all of their flaws and the flaws of their handlers, somehow managed to accomplish all of this amidst the most chaotic time in world history. The impact could be a bit overstated in accounts, but they did have an impact, especially in how they revealed intentions and actions of the British and Americans to the Soviets. The adage "with friends like these, who needs enemies?" so applies here. Solid writing and discussion of actions. Probably could have discussed more of the post-defection life of Burgess, MacLean and Philby, as they were not as revered or trusted like the book and current Russian propaganda seems to portray. Still, worth the read regardless of format.

[David N Butcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought I knew a lot about the Cambridge Five, but this book explained much more about their motivations and the consequences of their actions. I wouldn't describe the book as 'unputdownable', but rather a fascinating insight into pre-Cold War espionage and intrigue.
While the focus of the book is on the Five, there are many other connected English and US Soviet agents who are mentioned in passing, but with no further details on their role and impact. Philby, McLean, Burgess, Blunt and Cairncross worked together but not in group isolation, and I felt this aspect of the book was missing. The post-defection of Burgess, McLean and Philby was cursorily covered in the penultimate chapter, but the story of their treachery should have continued, particularly their 'isolation' and suspicious distrust by Soviet officials, and later Philby's continued work with the new KGB in training agents for Western operations and political analysis. And while a lot of interesting focus was given in the book to the Five's motivations and ideology, little was mentioned of their attitudes in their post-discovery life, (for example, Blunt's continuation but ostracism at Buckingham Palace and the royal family's reaction to 'harbouring' a treasonous traitor).
Perhaps the most glaring omission, though, was Nicolas Elliott's meetings and interviews with Philby in Beirut on the eve of his defection, and subsequent suspicions that Elliott aided and abetted (or at least, encouraged) Philby's defection.
Overall, though, the book is a very interesting and comprehensive study of why, how, and what occurred - and is most certainly continuing today.

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an American, maybe I just missed the memo on the British spies for Stalin, but this was new information for me and I LOVE learning new things.

I found Stalin's Apostles to be well researched and an engaging read. While I sometimes had a little trouble keeping the different spies straight, that wasn't due to an error by the author but rather my own tracking as their stories wove together. These men led very interesting lives and there was just a lot of good information about their time corresponding with the Soviets.

The only thing I could have wished for was a little more information about their childhoods. I'd be interested to see how that time shaped their subsequent choices as young men and then as fully formed adults. I understand that information can be harder to come by though as you tend to know less people in childhood, your memory can be more spotty during those years, and the men had been selective (and with with varying degrees of truth) in what they reported about their own lives.

Overall, I found it to be a well researched book on a worth while topic. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in that section of history.

Thank you to NetGalley and PublicAffairs for the chance to read this book in exchange for my honest review. As always, all opinions are 100% my own.

[Girard Bowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a deep dive into the Cambridge Five. It's amazing that these students continued to support Communism even after it was well-known how ruthlessly Russia repressed its enemies, both within and without. Alcoholism and profligacy are the C5 hallmarks. They're also very smart and seemingly amoral, and had positions of responsibility in British and American intelligence. What's also astounding is that being part of the old-boy network they didn't come under suspicion until evidence from VENONA made it impossible to ignore that the C5 were the moles the FBI, CIA & MI5 had spent years looking for. A few of them were even in charge of undercovering Russian spying in the intelligence agencies.

More information here than I really wanted or needed; lots of tangents and tangential characters. But still interesting reading, particularly towards the end when things fell apart for the C5.

[Fred H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. I had a vague knowledge of the Cambridge Five but did not realize how much damage they did. Britain and the United States kept sending anti-communist refugees back into their countries conquered by the Soviet Union after World War II as partisans, and the detailed information that the five spies gave the Stalin regime caused almost all of them to either be killed or captured. The partisans taken alive faced a horrible choice: either work as double agents for the Stalin regime and entrap others, or face torture and death - not only of themselves but of their families.

One thing the book did not and probably could not answer - why these men continued to work for Stalin after the brutal nature of his regime became obvious.

[sarai · Rating 5 out of 5]

well researched, lucidly written, excellently structured. this was an extremely informative book peppered with just the right amount of personal anecdotes and impressions to humanize history even as it deals with the unsavoriest of characters. espionage is not dashing romance and intrigue; it has real consequences for real people and senior does not shy away from bringing all the pigeons home to roost. the specifics of balkan and baltic resistance against the soviets, moreover, are lesser-known in the tales of the first half of the 20th century, so i definitely appreciated learning more about that as well.

thanks to netgalley and publicaffairs for the e-arc!

[Matt Galyon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a remarkable book. I was unfamiliar with the Cambridge 5, though I was certainly aware that the Soviets had spies in both the UK and the US during the Cold War era. To read about the depths of the betrayals carried out by Stalin’s five and the way in which the betrayals were carried out is part infuriating and part mystifying. This book has certainly filled in some gaps in my own thinking on the Cold War and will inform my own teaching on the subject moving forward. This book is an easy 5 stars from me. I would highly recommend it to anyone who has interest in the Cold War, spy thrillers, and general 20th century history.

[Leon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly wonderful book that contrasts the intellectual brilliance of the Cambridge Five and far sightedness of the intelligence gathering of the Soviet Union with the real world effects and damage that their treachery created.

This is a book that prompts far more questions than it answers about ideology and principles, the clouded world of the secret services and whether some element of spying is not only necessary but desirable for a safer world.

I'm genuinely not sure after reading whether I like or detest the Cambridge Five, but isn't that the point? They were complex men, all ultimately unhappy, but all willing to stand for something however egregious those beliefs were.

[Phil Curme · Rating 5 out of 5]

This comprehensive study of the Cambridge spies is a real page turner. The narrative whistles along at a cracking pace and every page brings new insight and fascinating revelations. I finished it in no time - entertained and educated, but feeling angry at how Philby, Maclean, Burgess, Blunt and Cairncross had betrayed their country and in doing so, cost the lives of so many good people. Recommended without reservation.

[Richard Jaffe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and PublicAffairs for this advance ARC in return for an honest review.

Stalin's Apostles follows the recruitment and the eventual exploits of the "Cambridge Five," "Kim" Philby, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, Donald MacLean and John Cairncross.

In the waning moments of the Depression, many of Britain's young upper class were disillusioned and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, seemed to be just the elixir. One of the Russian "illegals" surmised that these University Communists would be perfect "spies" for Mother Russia, and Josef Stalin, if properly cultivated now, and they would hopefully rise to important roles in the British Government, given their station in life.

Although more familiar with Kim Philby, and to a lesser extent, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, I was somewhat surprised to learn that John Cairncross and even Anthony Blunt may have been more "prolific" spies in the beginning. Senior tends to focus on the effect the Cambridge 5's efforts had on Stalin's attempts to have a greater post-WWII foothold in Eastern Europe and how he was able to stack the deck in any negotiations with the US and England by knowing their strategies before hand.

Given the scope of the betrayals of these 5 Russian spies, Senior related the shear number of documents stolen and copied by these men rather illuminating the contents of their betrayals. I also would have liked to hear more about the aftermath of some of these leaks as well as what transpired once Burgess, Maclean, and ultimately, the "Third Man" Philby defected and how they were treated by the Country they spied for. Nonetheless a fascinating read for anyone wanting to learn about this era of the Cold War, or even those with more than a passing knowledge of these events.

#NetGalley #StalinsApostles

[mjm136 · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars, rounded down to 4. Excellent nonfiction account of the Cambridge Five, and the first I've read that really focuses on the terrible human cost of their spying and not just the fascinating if horrifying humans they were. One nit: the book occasionally got a bit too far in the weeds for me. But a really good book.

[Daniel DeLappe · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

A very well written and researched book on these five piles of garbage. If you read this book and are not pissed off on the amount of money wasted by everyone in the world with the useless Cold War and how freaking dumb the intelligence services were for letting these spies get away and not found out. You are not breathing or alive.

[Anne Sallaway · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is insane and reads like a spy thriller.

It starts with the recruitment of the Cambridge 5 in the 1930s and spans forty years; covering their journey from idealistic students to corrupt alcoholics supporting Stalin’s regime. Easily accessible even with zero previous knowledge of the topic.

5/5