Britainology 15: The Cambridge Spies
During World War II and the early Cold War there were a group of English intelligence operatives who spied for the Soviet Union. All of them basically walked around with huge neon signs attached to them that said 'I am a spy for the Soviet Union,' but due to the diamond-hard class solidarity of Britain's establishment, everyone forced themselves to not notice this. We brought on Alice to discuss the Cambridge Spies and we hope you enjoy it.
Comments (16)
Damn, now I want a podcast dedicated to Alice talking about post ww2 irl espionage shit
My dad is an old British communist. He has a medal from the Moscow state bank for East/West trade.
One of the fun parts of Kim Philby is that his dad, St. John Philby, was also a spy and was one of the key people involved it the establishment of Trashfuture favorite Saudi Arabia
I read the Karla trilogy like 3 times when I was a teenager and understood precisely nothing of it but kept on because I thought it was making me smarter
Leather bound Britainology box set please
Had to relisten to the last 20 minutes because I was rolling so hard at the Afghans learning noncing from the British bit. Happy friday y’all.
You guys may have broken me brain. When Alice said "There must be a fifth man", l heard "There must be a bin man". Because, you know, remember when the bin man was hard left?
super good episode
The inability of the security services to see the obvious truth about the Cambridge Spies is surely just another instance of the Establishments pathological blindless towards Imperial decline. As mentioned by Milo (?), Le Carre is pretty good at evoking this in his work, especially with, for example in TTSS with the "dusty teabags" (tea comes from India! Geddit?) and the introduction of an office coffee machine that the girls in the office giggle around, a fairly blatant allegory towards the rise of the US that, again, Le Carre leaves deliberately unspoken. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I did a summer term at Pembroke college when I was 19 and nobody recruited me to be a spy. What a ripoff!!
Virgin cisgender millennials with generalized anxiety disorder VS Chad gay upper class double agent marxists with severe alcohol use disorder
The visuals I keep getting of misfits going to the Post Office are worth the cost of this subscription by themselves
Excellent Britainology, as ever. If anyone wanted a better researched, more philosophical (but not as funny) podcast on the subject - focused more specifically on Anthony Blunt - I would recommend Bad Gays’ episode about him https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bad-gays/id1455620224?i=1000436120794
I was a loyal Bad Gays listener before I got into Trashfuture. I heard the free preview of this episode and busted out laughing so many times that I had to sign up on Patreon to listen to the whole thing. Trashfuture's take on the Cambridge Spy Ring makes Bad Gays' episode on Anthony Blunt seem downright reverent in comparison. Both really excellent in different ways, highly recommend both.
Looking forward to this one. Just finished re-reading Declare by Tim Powers.
Ugggghh. A $5 not $10 episode of Britannology? Not sure how I feel about this discount tier Britannology.