HAVE BEEN reading Mr. Driberg's articles about his friend (not
Britain's) Guy Burgess. As a leading journalist's treatment of an intrinsically interesting subject they are curiously flat. Burgess, though he provides some quite cleverly angled Soviet propaganda (and some plainly false statements), is often ridiculous. For instance, living in the lower levels of Soviet politics, he is one of the few politically-minded people in the world who has not read the 'Secret Speech' and so does not know that it is incorrect to blame Beria for the 'Doctors' Plot.' And he is revealed as vain to the point of idiocy in his ideas of his own past and present influence and importance.. But Mr. Driberg's own comments are out of this world. He gives an account of Burgess's life, furbished with all sorts of respectable details apparently designed to show that he was a respectable character : the same, on a less snobbish level, might. have been done for Dr. Crippen.
PHAROS
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