A Spy Named Orphan - Roland Phillips
There’s nothing like being handed official government documents from the National Archives to drive a cover concept. Our endpapers document the last known movements of one of Britains most well-kept secrets. Donald Maclean, a former British Diplomat and head of the American Dept in the Foreign Office, was one of the Cambridge Five - a spy ring acting for the Soviet Union. ‘Orphan’ tells the story of his astonishing double life – from austere childhood to Cambridge Graduate to his eventual defection in 1951.
A star diplomat with a tendancy for wild binges, Maclean was the perfect spy, leaking huge amounts of top-secret data to the Russians and heightening the tensions of the Cold war.
The front cover is from a portrait by Lettice Ramsey and Helen Muspratt who photographed many of Cambridge’s leading pre-war intellects. Thanks to Peter Lofts who now owns and runs the Ramsey and Muspratt archive.
