A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy
Deborah McDonald, Jeremy Dronfield
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 178074708X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
When Lockhart arrived in Revolutionary Russia in 1918, his official mission was Britain’s envoy to the new Bolshevik government, yet his real assignment was to create a network of agents and plot the downfall of Lenin. Lockhart soon got to know Moura and they began a passionate affair, even though Moura was spying on him for the Bolsheviks. But when Lockhart’s plot unravelled, she would forsake everything in an attempt to protect him from Lenin’s secret police. Fleeing to a life of exile in England and taking a string of new lovers, including Maxim Gorky and H. G. Wells, Moura later spied for Stalin and for Britain amidst the web of scandal surrounding the Cambridge spies. Through all this she clung to the hope that Lockhart would finally return to her.
Grippingly narrated, this is the first biography of Moura Budberg to use the full range of previously unexamined letters, diaries and documents. An incredible true story of passion, espionage and double crossing that encircled the globe, A Very Dangerous Woman brings her extraordinary world vividly to life with dramatic resonances to rival the most sensational novel.
onto the Palace Quay. Lights could be seen shining in the windows of the British Embassy – the electricity was working tonight; a happy omen, perhaps. Sir George Buchanan was giving a Christmas reception for the hundred or so staff and attachés of the Embassy, as well as for a select group of close Russian friends who had not yet fled the country. Moura and Djon von Benckendorff were among them. It was a poignantly British affair, marking Christmas on the day it would fall in Britain – which was
now on he would see only deputies. Britain’s star seemed to be falling, and so the mood in the Strelna restaurant that night was that of the eve of departure. Madame Nikolaievna’s gypsy songs filled the summer night with melancholy longing, the rhythm of the guitars and the depths of her contralto voice having their everlasting effect on Lockhart. ‘How it all comes back to me,’ he would write, ‘like every experience which we cannot repeat.’14 Aside from himself and Moura, there were five people
Moura, who had a powerful resistance to alcohol and could drink strong men into oblivion without showing more than a slur in her voice. Lockhart persuaded Madame Nikolaievna to repeat one particular song over and over; it was called ‘I Cannot Forget’, and was ‘in tune with my own turbulent soul’, ‘a throbbing plaint of longing and desire’ about a man reputed to be a faithless philanderer but who has been transfixed by one woman – ‘. . . why do I forget the rest / and still remember only
Lockhart was left now with just Hicks and Moura, plus occasional contacts with Sidney Reilly and the prospect of another visit from his two Latvians – assuming they managed to find a more senior officer to support them. It didn’t look promising – a week had gone by and still there was no further sight of them. All thought of insurrection was driven from Lockhart’s mind by the terrible blow that fell a few days after the release of the prisoners. Accurate intelligence is always outpaced by wild
Petrograd, having requested an audience with the Tsar to talk over the political situation in Russia. For an ambassador, he took an uncommon interest in the internal affairs of the country, and enjoyed an unusually close friendship with the Tsar. Sir George Buchanan was described by one of his junior consuls as ‘a frail-looking man with a tired, sad expression’ whose monocle, refined features and silver hair ‘gave him something of the appearance of a stage-diplomat’, but who possessed ‘a