5* Daily Telegraph review for Stalin's Englishman
12 Sep 2015

The Daily Telegraph have given a 5* review to Stalin’s Englishman under the heading ‘An assured Life of the Cambridge spy overturns the view of him as a weak link’ …a comprehensive, fascinating and startlingly revisionist life. Far from being the joker in the pack, Lownie shows that Burgess was actually the ace in the hole…surely the definitive account of Burgess’s career as a spy, and a fully rounded biography, which is inevitably damning, but also necessarily sympathetic…Lownie’s treatment of his fiendishly complicated and revelatory material is assured, and he shapes his narrative brilliantly. Stalin’s Englishman is superb, more riveting than any spy novel.’