9.0/10 (524 reviews)
Easily search & find obituaries in our extensive historical archive. Start now!
Search results
Robert O. Burgess, Sr. age 89 died peacefully at his home at Lake Isabella, Michigan on Sunday, September 26, 2021. He was born on October 15, 1931, in Verona, Pennsylvania. He grew up in Mt. Pleasant and Clare, MI where he met and married his high school sweetheart, Sally.
- Family Background
- Childhood and Schooling
- Cambridge
- BBC and Mi6
- Foreign Office
- Defection
- In The Soviet Union
- Decline and Death
The Burgess family's English roots can be traced to the arrival in Britain in 1592 of Abraham de Bourgeous de Chantilly, a refugee from the Huguenot religious persecutions in France. The family settled in Kent and became prosperous, mainly as bankers. Later generations created a military tradition; Burgess's grandfather, Henry Miles Burgess, was an...
The Gillman wealth ensured a comfortable home for the young family. Guy's earliest schooling was probably with a governess until, aged 9, he began as a boarder at Lockers Park, an exclusive preparatory school near Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. He did well there; his grades were consistently good and he played for the school's association football...
Undergraduate
Burgess arrived in Cambridge in October 1930, and quickly involved himself in many aspects of student life. He was not universally liked; one contemporary described him as "a conceited unreliable shit", although others found him amusing and good company. After a term, he was elected to the Trinity Historical Society, whose membership was formed from the brightest of Trinity College undergraduates and postgraduates. Here he encountered Harold "Kim" Philby and Jim Lees, the latter a former mine...
Postgraduate
Despite his disappointing degree result, Burgess returned to Cambridge in October 1933 as a postgraduate student and teaching assistant. His chosen research area was "Bourgeois Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England", but much of his time was devoted to political activism. That winter he formally joined the British Communist Party and became a member of its cell within CUSS. On 11 November 1933 he joined a mass demonstration against the perceived militarism of the city's Armistice Day cele...
Recruitment as Soviet agent
When Burgess returned to Cambridge in October 1934, his prospects of a college fellowship and an academic career were fast receding. He had abandoned his research after discovering that the same ground was covered in a new book by Basil Willey. He began an alternative study of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, but his time was largely preoccupied with politics. Early in 1934 Arnold Deutsch, a longstanding Soviet agent, arrived in London under the cover of a research appointment at University Coll...
BBC: first stint
In July 1936, having twice previously applied unsuccessfully for posts at the BBC, Burgess was appointed as an assistant producer in the corporation's Talks Department. Responsible for selecting and interviewing potential speakers for current affairs and cultural programmes, he drew on his extensive range of personal contacts and rarely met refusal. His relationships at the BBC were volatile; he quarrelled with management about his pay, while colleagues were irritated by his opportunism, his...
Section D
Section D was established by MI6 in March 1938, as a secret organisation charged with investigating how enemies might be attacked other than through military operations. Burgess acted as Section D's representative on the Joint Broadcasting Committee (JBC), a body set up by the Foreign Office to liaise with the BBC over the transmission of anti-Hitler broadcasts to Germany. His contacts with senior government officials enabled him to keep Moscow abreast of current government thinking. He infor...
BBC: second stint
In mid-January 1941 Burgess rejoined the BBC Talks Department, while continuing to carry out freelance intelligence work, both for MI6 and its domestic intelligence counterpart MI5, which he had joined in a supernumerary capacity in 1940. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the BBC required Burgess to select speakers who would depict Britain's new Soviet ally in a favourable light. He turned again to Blunt, and to his old Cambridge friend Jim Lees, and in 1942 arranged a broa...
London
As a press officer in the Foreign Office news department, Burgess's role involved explaining government policy to foreign editors and diplomatic correspondents. His access to secret material enabled him to send Moscow important details of Allied policy both before and during the March 1945 Yalta Conference. He passed information relating to the postwar futures of Germany and Poland, and also contingency plans for "Operation Unthinkable", which anticipated a future war with the Soviet Union. H...
Washington
Philby had preceded Burgess to Washington, and was serving there as local head of MI6, following in the path of Maclean, who had worked as the embassy's first secretary between 1944 and 1948.[n 10] Burgess soon reverted to his erratic and intemperate habits, causing regular embarrassment in British diplomatic circles. Despite this, he was given work of top secret sensitivity. Among his duties he served on the inter-allied board responsible for the conduct of the Korean War, which gave him acc...
Departure
Burgess returned to England on 7 May 1951. He and Blunt then contacted Yuri Modin, the Soviet spymaster in charge of the Cambridge ring, who began arrangements with Moscow to receive Maclean. Burgess showed little urgency in proceeding with the matter, finding time to pursue his personal affairs and attend an Apostles dinner in Cambridge. On 11 May he was summoned to the Foreign Office to answer for his misconduct in Washington and, according to Boyle, was dismissed.Other commentators say he...
Aftermath
On Saturday 26 May, Hewit informed a friend that Burgess had not come home the previous night. Since Burgess never went away without telling his mother, his absence caused some anxiety in his circle. Maclean's non-appearance at his desk on the following Monday raised concerns that he might have absconded. Disquiet increased when officials realised that Burgess, too, was missing; the discovery of the abandoned car, hired in Burgess's name, together with Melinda Maclean's revelations about "Rog...
After being held in Moscow for a short period, Burgess and Maclean were sent to Kuybyshev,[n 13] an industrial city in the Russian SFSR which Burgess described as "permanently like Glasgow on a Saturday night". He and Maclean were granted Soviet citizenship in October 1951, and took fresh identities: Burgess became "Jim Andreyevitch". Unlike Maclea...
Burgess suffered from increasing ill health, largely due to a lifestyle based on poor food and excessive alcohol. In 1960 and 1961 he was treated in hospital for arteriosclerosis and ulcers, on the latter occasion being close to death.In April 1962, writing to his friend Esther Whitfield, he indicated how his belongings should be allocated should h...
British aristocrat, BBC journalist, diplomat, Soviet intelligence officer. In an interview with The Times in 1979, Anthony Blunt said: "Guy Burgess was one of the smartest people I have ever met. However, it is also quite true that he sometimes got on people’s nerves."
Jan 2, 2022 · Find the obituary of Donna Sue Burgess (1942 - 2021) from Troy, MI. Leave your condolences to the family on this memorial page or send flowers to show you care.
- December 11, 2021
Leona G. Burgess Obituary. Leona G. Burgess Bay City, Michigan Leona passed away peacefully Wednesday, February 17, 2021 with her loving family by her side, age 93. She was born January 7, 1928 in Bay City, Michigan to the late Joseph and Eva (Loranger) LeTourneau.
Oct 19, 2021 · Obituary. October 15, 1931 - September 26, 2021 Robert O. Burgess, Sr. age 89 died peacefully at his home at Lake Isabella, Michigan on Sunday, September 26, 2021. He was born on October 15, 1931 in Verona, Pennsylvania.
Narrow Your Search by City. Michigan obituaries and death notices, 1995 to 2024. Find your ancestry info and recent death notices for relatives and friends.
