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The Blunt Affair

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The Blunt Affair examines a range of literary and filmic texts on the Cambridge spies and related topics – including British intelligence’s betrayal of Alan Turing, the Profumo Affair and the Portl...
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  • 10 December 2020
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The case of the Cambridge spies has long captured the public’s attention, but perhaps never more so than in the wake of Anthony Blunt’s exposure as the fourth man in November 1979. With the Cold War intensifying, patriotism running high during the Falklands War and the AIDS crisis leading to widespread homophobia, these notorious traitors were more relevant than ever. This book explores how they were depicted in literature, television and film throughout the 1980s. Examining works by an array of distinguished writers, including Dennis Potter, Alan Bennett, Tom Stoppard and John le Carré, it sheds new light on the affair, asking why such privileged young men chose to betray their country, whether loyalty to one’s friends is more important than patriotism and whether we can really trust the intelligence services.
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Price: £85.00
Pages: 272
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Publication Date: 10 December 2020
ISBN: 9781526148469
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:

PERFORMING ARTS / Film / History & Criticism, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / History & Criticism, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, Film history, theory or criticism, Cold wars and proxy conflicts

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Jonathan Bolton is Hollifield Professor of English Literature at Auburn University

Introduction: the Blunt Affair and its impact on literature, television and film in the 1980s
1 Tradition and treason in Dennis Potter’s Blade on the Feather
2 School for scandal: Julian Mitchell’s Another Country
3 Allegories of prudence: Alan Bennett’s Single Spies
4 Tender comrades: friendship and treason in Robin Chapman’s One of Us and Blunt — The Fourth Man
5 ‘Men of the middle ground’: John le Carré’s A Perfect Spy and the treachery of Kim Philby
6 The 'unsavoury' world of espionage: Tom Stoppard’s The Dog It Was That Died
7 Secrecy, the State and the citizen: Hugh Whitemore’s Pack of Lies, Concealed Enemies and Breaking the Code
8 Gentlemen’s agreement: Scandal, the Profumo Affair and the end of the Cold War
Conclusion: ‘getting at the darkness’: poststructuralism and naturalism in literature, television and film in the 1980s
Index