3 MAY 1957, Page 7

A Spectator's Notebook

THE LAST TIME Guy Burgess's name appeared in this journal was at the end of last year when he wrote a letter to the Editor suggesting that the Spectator was a puppet of the Foreign Office. Shortly before that, his name appeared over a parody of Tom• Driberg's visit to Moscow. It was not a very realistic parody, but a number of people, including some eminent Sovietologists, took the attribution to Burgess seriously. I should perhaps say therefore that the article on page 570 is genuinely by Burgess and that it is not a piece of double bluff by the Foreign Office to conceal its control of this paper. Nor, I Should add, is Burgess becoming one of our book reviewers, as I have seen stated elsewhere.

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