THE CUCKOOS' NEST - 500 Years of Cambridge Spies
by Christopher Catherwood
What
do the dramatist and Shakespeare contemporary Christopher Marlowe, the
Elizabethan courtier Sir Francis Walsingham, and Kim Philby, Anthony
Blunt, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and John Cairncross all have in
common?
The answer is that they were all at Cambridge University and all of them were spies...
This
brilliant new book is the first to unite such a fascinating group of
people, and to explore this extraordinary 500-year continuity provided
by their place of education. This direct continuity is something of
which Cambridge and its colleges are very aware, and which makes it such
a unique place in the annals of espionage, treachery and intrigue.
The
murder of Christopher Marlowe in a tavern brawl is still a mystery, a
subject upon which many books have been written, none with conclusive
results. But there is one factor upon which they all agree – that his
death was directly related to his activities as a spy. Some of those
involved, such as Robert Poley, were also Cambridge graduates, and with
the ideological war with Spain in the 16th century having strong
parallels with the similar 20th century struggle of the Cold War (not to
mention the fight against fascism in the 1930s that recruited many
Cambridge students to Marxism), the level of continuity is therefore
remarkable yet again.
The
Cuckoos’ Nest examines and illustrates the common international themes
of the times alongside the domestic political and social atmospheres
prevalent and elegantly and fascinatingly weaves them into a
spellbinding tale of treachery and treason.
Dr
Christopher Catherwood associated with Churchill
College, Cambridge, was Consultant to the Strategic Futures Team Team of
the Performance and Innovation Unit at the Cabinet Office in 2002
engaged in classified activities, and is the author of His Finest Hour
(2010, Skyhorse), Churchill’s Folly (2004, Carroll and Graf) and of A
Brief History of the Middle East (2010, Running Press) and many more.
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