This is one of those stories that piqued my interest. Perhaps it's an awful lot of very little. MI5 files released in the National Archive today show that the security services suspected poet W H Auden of assisting in the disappearance of the traitor Guy Burgess.MI5 and the FBI ordered the interrogation of Auden when it emerged that Burgess, who fled Britain on 25 May 1951 with fellow traitor Donald Maclean, had urgently tried to phone Auden the night before his defection. They had been tipped off by fellow Cambridge spy, Kim Philby, who was working for MI6 in Washington, that they were about to be unmasked.
Their disappearance led to a panic in the British government and security services, sparking a Europe-wide manhunt in which Auden became one of those suspected of assisting Burgess, possibly by sheltering him in his Italian holiday home. MI5 officers suspected Auden was "deliberately prevaricating" when he claimed he could not remember being told about Burgess's phone call.
MI5 was told that the night before the spy had phoned the north London home of another leading British poet, Stephen Spender, where Auden was staying. Using an unnamed contact, MI5 officers arranged for Auden to be interviewed about his relationship with Burgess (Auden had known Burgess since the 1930s) . The file stated: "Our object is to get a detailed chronological account of Auden's association with Burgess, a list of their mutual friends and, of course, Auden's views on whether any aspect of their association could have, in retrospect, seem[ed] significant to his disappearance."
Although Burgess was considered to have been less important to the Kremlin than Philby and Maclean, his disappearance was the first warning that Britain's security services had been penetrated by a Soviet spy ring.
