The other day I listened to Alan Bennett’s An Englishman Abroad, as I like to do from time to time. This is the BBC radio recording with Simon Callow as Burgess and Brigit Forsyth as Coral Browne.
I suppose it is something of a favourite of mine. I have seen the original 1983 TV film with Alan Bates more than once, I have a copy of the text on my bookshelf, and I saw the theatrical version with Robert Powell and Liza Goddard.
Out of a real-life anecdote, the actress Coral Browne’s chance meeting in Moscow with the exiled Cambridge Spy, Guy Burgess, Alan Bennett fashioned a witty and amusing piece that invites us to reflect on those perennial English pre-occupations of class, charm and the establishment. In the original film, Coral Browne played herself.
This version of Burgess is not so much a villain as a scapegoat, condemned to “sit on the naughty step” forever, not allowed back to the UK because there “is too much egg on people’s faces”, despite the fact that the threat of prosecution that hung over him could never be carried out.
I love the quote from Browning’s The Lost Leader that comes near the end: “Life’s night begins, let him never come back to us/There would be doubt, hesitation and pain/False praise on our part, the glimmer of evening/Never glad confident morning again.”
The music is beautifully chosen, too. Burgess has only one gramophone record, Who Stole My Heart Away by Jack Buchanan, which he plays repeatedly. It seems like a neat allusion to Stalin until Burgess asks Coral Browne if she knows Buchanan. I nearly married him, she explains; he jilted me.
And what could be more appropriate to close with than the Gilbert and Sullivan song? “For in spite of all temptations, to belong to other nations, he remains an Englishman”. Impossible to hear now without seeing in one’s mind’s eye Alan Bates strolling insouciantly along, resplendent in his new outfit, made up from the measurements that he persuaded Coral Browne to take back to his tailor in London.
It could easily be argued that Bennett was too soft on Burgess here, although I think his concern was more with the condition of exile than with spying. Burgess certainly did supply huge bundles of documents to his Soviet masters. However, the very ease with which he obtained them meant that the Soviets could never quite rid themselves of the suspicion that he was a plant, still working for the British. Much of the material he supplied was never translated into Russian and it’s been suggested that it was the revelation of traitors in high places that did the real damage to British interests, rather than any information leaked.
Alan Bennett himself was one of the bright young men who were seconded from the army during their national service in the 1950s and given intensive training in the Russian language. It was thought that in the event of a war with Russia, interpreters would be needed for the interrogation of prisoners. It’s been rumoured that Burgess liked to cast an eye over the young men, possibly fishing for potential recruits to the Russian cause. I wonder if he and Bennett ever met?
I’ve been out of a job for some while, so these days I feel a bit like Guy Burgess myself, as he sits marooned in his Moscow apartment, doing the crossword, waiting for the afternoon phone call from his minders giving him permission to go out.
The Good Reader 