Volume 36, Number 6 · April 13, 1989
The Upper Class and the Underworld
By Noel Annan
Single Spies
two new plays by Alan Bennett. a National Theatre production
Mask of Treachery
by John Costello
Morrow, 765 pp., $22.95
The Master Spy: The Story of Kim Philby
by Phillip Knightley
Knopf, 292 pp., $19.95
The Wilson Plot: How the Spycatchers and Their American Allies Tried to Overthrow the British Government
by David Leigh
Pantheon, 271 pp., $19.95
The British obsession with spies and spycatchers continues to seethe. Books thud from the press and you cannot get a seat at the National Theatre for Alan Bennett's Single Spies, an evening consisting of two short plays, one about Guy Burgess, the other about Anthony Blunt. Bennett belongs to that remarkable generation of John Osborne, Harold Pinter, and Michael Frayn, and is as gifted as any of them. He has a marvelous ear and is as merciless to the pompous as he is understanding of the failures in life. A series of monologues he wrote for television (each an hour-long talking head, the TV producer's nightmare) was so admired that it has just been repeated; and one of them, Mrs. Silly, was recently shown on American television.
Review, 6495 words
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