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Hi and welcome to Spycast, from the Secret Files of the International Spy Museum in Washington DC.

I'm Dr. Andrew Hammond, the Museum's historian and curator.

Every week, Spycast brings you conversations with practitioners, authors and scholars who live in the world of global espionage.

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Our guest today is Nigel West. His true name is Rupert Allison.

One of the best known British historians and authors on intelligence books. He has written some 25 books.

He's a former conservative member of parliament, some 10 years, and he still regularly teaches both here and in Europe and even on cruises from time to time.

He's the European editor of the World Intelligence Review, based here in Washington and European editor of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence.

He has been called the experts by some in terms of intelligence and many believe that his revelations are so precise, it is almost as if he worked for intelligence, but he doesn't.

So Nigel, welcome.

Thank you.

And I think what might be fascinating to our readers is the frequent references in Spy literature, certainly here at the museum, to the Cambridge Five.

You probably have know that case as well and have written as much as anyone. Could you for us give us an overview of summary and insight into the Cambridge Five?

These were five young men who at university at the height of the Depression in the early 1930s, made an ideological commitment to the Soviet Union.

Their motivation is hard to understand now, but it is very clear that this was a deep long-term political commitment to the Soviet cause.

And what's fascinating is that they were all recruited before they ever really had access to classified information and having volunteered to the Soviets.

The NKVD at that time, the principal Soviet intelligence service, directed their careers.

And of the five, four of them became pretty significant members of, I guess you might call the secret establishment or the corridors of power in Whitehall.

Not enough to influence policy, but sufficient to betray political trends, policy decisions, intelligence operations, personalities, methodologies.

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