The Cambridge Spy Wives (Trade book): Project design
Outline
Seven narrative biographical chapters of about 8,000 words, each on one wife.
Prologue – 5,000 words
Conclusion – 5,000 words
Book – 60,000 words plus front and back matter
1 Background
Agreed at BGU in early-Feb 2020: Writing rate est 5000 words per chapter x 5 each @ 1/month. 2 sample chapters and prologue completed by 1 Sep 2020 (postponed to early-2021 by COVID-19) for submission to agent (Smith, Lownie, Cull et al?).
Plan changed in early 2021 to trade book entitled The Cambridge Spy Wives with a chapter on each wife. Pitched orally to North Bank Agency by CHH on 10 Feb 2021. Positive response, with request for elevator pitch and summary proposal (submitted 22 Feb 2021). See below.
2 Elevator pitch
On 12 December 1957, Aileen Philby was discovered dead, allowing the infamous Soviet penetration agent, Kim Philby, to marry again the following year. Upon hearing the news of his second wife’s death, Philby announced in a Beirut bar how he had just had ‘a wonderful escape’.
Most of us know which of the Cambridge Five were not flamboyantly gay — Donald Maclean, Kim Philby, and John Cairncross. But what do we really know of the seven extraordinary women they married? Seven shadowy figures who shared their husbands’ peculiar lives of treachery, subterfuge, headlong flight, and dramatic banishment from all that was familiar to them. Were these loyal companions ever able to find a clear identity for themselves? Were they in fact active doctrinaire Marxists? Were they perhaps even Stalinist spies? Were they complicit in their partners’ espionage? Or were they merely voiceless victims of difficult domestic circumstances caused by their husbands’ reckless, selfish duplicity?
Certainly, the lives of these women were always governed to some degree by the fear of exposure, and by the possible need to cut and run, forced to seek sanctuary in an alien communist world. From comfortable British and American suburbia, from the sophistication of prewar Vienna, or from the glamour of sun-drenched Beirut, to the frigid, spartan streets of Kuybyshev and Moscow, this book follows the nomadic lives and times of seven remarkable spouses — Melinda, Litzi, Aileen, Eleanor, Rufina, Gabi, and Gayle — as they struggle in their various ways to cope with the menacing secret world that envelops and threatens to destroy the families of professional spies, especially those who defect to the enemy.
On the basis of their exhaustive international research and solid sources, historians Claire Hubbard-Hall and Adrian O’Sullivan have created a fascinating chronicle of adversity, courage, and survival that seeks to validate the unique humanity and vitality of these generally overlooked Cambridge Spy Wives. They deserve to be remembered for more than just their husbands’ notoriety.
3 Summary pitch
On 7 June 1951, a restrained headline appeared in the Daily Express: ‘Yard Hunts 2 Britons On Way To Russia’. Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean were the notorious men on the run, heading for a life of exile in the Soviet Union. From that day on, over many decades, the Cambridge spy-ring scandal grew at a glacial pace and slowly unravelled in the press. As it did so, it gave rise to an extensive, mostly journalistic literature, that was at first puzzled and indignant, then scurrilous, and finally full of moral outrage. The louche lifestyles, the unbridled promiscuity, and the chronic alcoholism of many of the principal personalities seemed to shock the general public even more than their evident duplicity and treachery. Not until all five Stalinist traitors — Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross — had been unmasked, and various unimpeachable sources had been interrogated and documented, were historians finally able to investigate, analyse, and evaluate the cumulative damage that had been done to the UK, the US, and other Western allies by all five spies.
Thus the emphasis of the scholarly literature has so far been on the covert active-espionage roles, relationships, and operations of the Cambridge Five, not on their manifest world. Their wives, their children, their families may merit an occasional mention in the literature, but seldom more than a few brief articles or paragraphs. In other words, what we now have before us is an excessively masculine, male-oriented body of work, which needs to be offset by a penetrating, yet entertaining biographical narrative that roams beyond the obscure technical consequences of professional tradecraft, to shine a bright light upon the seven remarkable women who have so far been unjustifiably — perhaps accidently — neglected: the Cambridge Spy Wives.
To fill this lacuna, we therefore propose a straightforward collection of seven biographical narratives (chapters) on each of the wives: Melinda Marling, married to Maclean; Litzi Friedmann, Aileen Furse, Eleanor Brewer, and Rufina Pukhova, married to Philby; Gabi Oppenheim and Gayle Brinkerhoff, married to Cairncross (see Contents below). The book will open with a straightforward prologue that provides a clear overview of the Cambridge Five saga, with salient dates and places: genesis, spying, evasion, detection, exposure, refuge. It will end with an epilogue that ties up any loose ends, and that poses the ultimate question — In the danger zone where the secret and manifest worlds intersect, and where a spy’s family dwells, who bears the greatest risk: the state, the operative, or the dependants?
We wish to reach the widest possible readership. We intend to move the stories along at a brisk pace with a clear, lively narrative writing style, plenty of anecdotes, and plenty of photos. The book will demonstrate how espionage throws up unique, timely issues around various kinds of love, secrecy, roles, loyalty, coping strategies, even substance abuse and domestic violence. At the same time, we hope there will emerge a positive sense that the role of women in the secret world is an important one, even though they may not be formally invested in it. Of these seven women, only Litzi was herself a professional spy; the rest were essentially drafted into something for which they were not at all prepared, though Melinda had an inkling that Maclean was dodgy from the moment they first met. And one of the things that will make our book so interesting to read is the fact that we have discovered seven of the least similar, most highly differentiated personalities any author could possibly have hoped to find! Perhaps it will be possible to obtain a personal interview with at least one of the two surviving wives (Gayle Cairncross-Gow [Edinburgh]) and possibly with some other surviving UK-based relatives. We think it unlikely that an interview could be arranged with Rufina Philby (Moscow).
4 Organisation
Preface (if we can find a worthy to do one for us!)
Acknowledgements
Contents
Acronyms and abbreviations (?)
Chronology
Prologue
1 Melinda [CHH]
2 Litzi [AOS]
3 Aileen [CHH]
4 Eleanor [CHH]
5 Rufina [AOS]
6 Gabi [AOS]
7 Gayle [CHH]
Epilogue
Dramatis personae
Notes (page footers or chapter endnotes?)
Select bibliography
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