Looking for Mr. Nobody: Secret Life of Goronwy Rees by Jenny Rees
Jenny Rees is the eldest of the five children of Goronwy Rees, Editor of Encounter and friend of A.J. Ayer, Noel Annan and Elizabeth Bowen (who put him in her novel Death of the Heart). Since Rees's death more than 10 years ago she has had to cope with the frequently-made allegations that her father was another of the spies recruited at Cambridge in the 1930s. He had never disguised his friendship with Guy Burgess, who with Donald Maclean had defected to Moscow in 1951. In 1979 Rees helped Andrew Boyle unmask Anthony Blunt, the fourth man, but by then Rees himself was dying of cancer. Was Rees himself actually a spy? The recent opening of KGB files have acted as a spur to Jenny Rees in her quest to exorcise the past. The result is full of unexpected revelation made all the more moving as Jenny Rees discovers for the first time the secret life of her father.