I'm Roland Phillipps author of A Spy Named Orphan: The Enigma of Donald Maclean
We're standing outside Waterstone's Piccadilly. I'm now going to
take you on a walk of Donald Maclean's last day in London,
25th of May 1951, 67 years ago. When he went, as he did most days in fact, from the
Foreign Office to Soho for lunch, back across to Pall Mall to his club
and across St James's Park and back to his desk. No one he met on that day had
any inkling that his defection was planned to the last moment and that nine
hours later he would be leaving England for the last time. We're outside the
Foreign Office in London where Donald Maclean worked. On his last day in London
25th of May 1951, 67 years ago, it was also his 38th birthday and he left the
Foreign Office at lunchtime to have his lunch with his old friend Lady Mary
Campbell who'd picked him up when the year before he'd come home from
Cairo suffering from a terrible alcoholic breakdown. And this was their
celebratory lunch. He knew he was going to defect that evening but she commented
how remarkably well he looked, his bowtie was jauntily tied, they met Cyril Connolly
an old friend in Soho who last time he'd seen Maclean, Maclean had been
passed out flat on his hall floor, meaning Connolly's guests had to step over
him to get out. We've just walked across St James's Park as Maclean did most days in
his last period in London working in the American Department of the Foreign Office.
We know he walked cross St James's Park
and up the Duke of York steps to Pall Mall and his club, The Traveller's Club
because by the last month in London up to the 25th of May he was being followed
by MI5 watchers. One of the things about Donald MacLean is he was very tall, he
was six foot four, the Watchers tended not to be. They were recorded as being
rather small men in raincoats and trilbies and it was on these steps that one of
MacLean's fellow workers in the Foreign Office was rather surprised to see
Maclean taking the steps two at a time while this watcher rather puffed behind him
He thought 'I wonder what on earth was going on.' He didn't have long to wait to find out.
The Traveller's Club was Donald Maclean's
club in London, fittingly for a man who spent most of his working life abroad.
And it was here that he came on his birthday on his way back from
lunch he walked in here and cashed a check for 10 pounds. I've seen the cheque
in the MI5 files and it's a mystery what it's for. Whether to be seen
to be doing something normal of a Friday getting some money for the weekend,
whether he was leaving some money for Melinda his wife to have after he'd gone.
But anyway he did stop off here and it was next door at the Reform Club that he
and Burgess made their plans for the defection. And the watchers, who couldn't
of course come into these gentlemen's clubs noted that MacLaine always seemed
very calm indeed when he came out, whereas Burgess seemed very agitated.
So after a period of years of alcoholic agitation, now the die was cast, he
seemed very calm and so he left the Traveller's Club about three o'clock
after cashing his check, went back to work, did a very good afternoon's
work, then said 'You haven't forgotten I've got tomorrow off?' to his
colleagues and that was the last they saw of him. So here we are back at
Waterstones Piccadilly. I hope that gives you some idea both of Maclean's last
day in London and indeed of the content of my book. The spy, who everyone knew by
that time was a spy, acting icy calm before the defection that rocked the establishment