A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy by Deborah McDonald, Jeremy Dronfield Page A
Authors: Deborah McDonald, Jeremy Dronfield
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down repeatedly, said of her, ‘I have rarely seen her in any room with other women in which she was not plainly – not merely in my eyes but to many others – the most attractive and interesting presence.’ 1
There were always rumours about her. She had been a spy, a betrayer, a double or even triple agent, in the service of MI6, MI5, the KGB . . . nobody could tell for sure, but everybody had his or her own opinion on the matter. She knew simply everybody who was anybody, and liked to convey that she knew everything about them as well. People who entered the sprawling social web the Baroness spun around herself were warned by the older acquaintances to watch their step and their tongues – Moura knew all, saw all, and had powerful, dangerous connections. But hardly anyone, enveloped in one of her bear hugs and subjected to her charm, could resist her.
Baroness Budberg – or the version she presented to the world – was a figure made partly out of fables and lies. Some of them (and not necessarily the most flattering ones) were her own inventions, concocted or stolen from the lives of others and added to the living mythology of Moura Budberg. She had spied for the Germans in the First World War; had spied for and against the British and the Russians; had worked as an agent for the fearsome Bolshevik secret police during the Red Terror of the Revolution; was the mistress of the British agent who plotted to bring down Lenin; had been the trusted agent of Stalin; and she might even have committed murder.
If there were any grains or shards of truth scattered in the folds of myth, nobody cared to discern what they might be, or separate them from the lies. Each man and woman who knew the Baroness – family member, friend, acquaintance or enemy – liked to imagine that he or she had put a finger on what made her tick, or knew concealed truths about her. Few of them, in fact, knew more than a fragment about her.
What they most wanted to know was the truth about her earliest adventures – her love affair with the British diplomat and secret agent Robert Bruce Lockhart in revolutionary Russia, and her involvement in his plot to bring down the Bolshevik government.
Almost all her friends wished that she would write her memoirs. The writer and peace campaigner Peter Ritchie Calder felt ‘a deep affection for her, and I’ve always thought what a marvellous book could be written about her’. 2 He wasn’t the only one. Publishers Alfred A. Knopf and Hamish Hamilton tried to arrange for her to produce an autobiography, and although she took and spent the advance, not a word was written. She had begun a memoir decades earlier, but nobody ever saw it, and it was burned – along with most of her other papers – shortly before she died in 1974.
After her death, several attempts were made to write a biography, but most came to nothing for lack of source material.
In 1979, five years after the Baroness had gone to her grave, biographer Andrew Boyle attempted to write her life. His book Climate of Treason – which caused Anthony Blunt to be exposed as a Soviet spy – had topped the bestseller lists, and he turned his attention to the woman who, coincidentally, had tried to tip off MI5 about Blunt decades earlier. He found her a much deeper mystery than any Cambridge spy, and almost as well defended by her circle of close friends. The exchanges of letters between Boyle and the members of Moura’s circle show a curtain quickly being drawn down around her as soon as her family realised what he was up to.
Boyle got as far as sketching out an outline, in which he noted that ‘a virtue must be made of explaining the tentative nature of the material’ 3 relating to her early life. But the biography was never written – the writer who had penetrated the mystery of the last Cambridge spy couldn’t catch a sure enough hold on Moura Budberg to bring her to life.
One biographer succeeded where Andrew Boyle failed. Nina
There were always rumours about her. She had been a spy, a betrayer, a double or even triple agent, in the service of MI6, MI5, the KGB . . . nobody could tell for sure, but everybody had his or her own opinion on the matter. She knew simply everybody who was anybody, and liked to convey that she knew everything about them as well. People who entered the sprawling social web the Baroness spun around herself were warned by the older acquaintances to watch their step and their tongues – Moura knew all, saw all, and had powerful, dangerous connections. But hardly anyone, enveloped in one of her bear hugs and subjected to her charm, could resist her.
Baroness Budberg – or the version she presented to the world – was a figure made partly out of fables and lies. Some of them (and not necessarily the most flattering ones) were her own inventions, concocted or stolen from the lives of others and added to the living mythology of Moura Budberg. She had spied for the Germans in the First World War; had spied for and against the British and the Russians; had worked as an agent for the fearsome Bolshevik secret police during the Red Terror of the Revolution; was the mistress of the British agent who plotted to bring down Lenin; had been the trusted agent of Stalin; and she might even have committed murder.
If there were any grains or shards of truth scattered in the folds of myth, nobody cared to discern what they might be, or separate them from the lies. Each man and woman who knew the Baroness – family member, friend, acquaintance or enemy – liked to imagine that he or she had put a finger on what made her tick, or knew concealed truths about her. Few of them, in fact, knew more than a fragment about her.
What they most wanted to know was the truth about her earliest adventures – her love affair with the British diplomat and secret agent Robert Bruce Lockhart in revolutionary Russia, and her involvement in his plot to bring down the Bolshevik government.
Almost all her friends wished that she would write her memoirs. The writer and peace campaigner Peter Ritchie Calder felt ‘a deep affection for her, and I’ve always thought what a marvellous book could be written about her’. 2 He wasn’t the only one. Publishers Alfred A. Knopf and Hamish Hamilton tried to arrange for her to produce an autobiography, and although she took and spent the advance, not a word was written. She had begun a memoir decades earlier, but nobody ever saw it, and it was burned – along with most of her other papers – shortly before she died in 1974.
After her death, several attempts were made to write a biography, but most came to nothing for lack of source material.
In 1979, five years after the Baroness had gone to her grave, biographer Andrew Boyle attempted to write her life. His book Climate of Treason – which caused Anthony Blunt to be exposed as a Soviet spy – had topped the bestseller lists, and he turned his attention to the woman who, coincidentally, had tried to tip off MI5 about Blunt decades earlier. He found her a much deeper mystery than any Cambridge spy, and almost as well defended by her circle of close friends. The exchanges of letters between Boyle and the members of Moura’s circle show a curtain quickly being drawn down around her as soon as her family realised what he was up to.
Boyle got as far as sketching out an outline, in which he noted that ‘a virtue must be made of explaining the tentative nature of the material’ 3 relating to her early life. But the biography was never written – the writer who had penetrated the mystery of the last Cambridge spy couldn’t catch a sure enough hold on Moura Budberg to bring her to life.
One biographer succeeded where Andrew Boyle failed. Nina
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