Philby was forced to leave MI6, but his friends there continued to protect him. He was well provided for materially, but as a result of his lifestyle his health deteriorated, and he died in 1963. He fled to Russia in 1963. They ended up up in Moscow, where Burgess died in 1963.Burgess – charming and often drunk – was a much more dangerous and effective spy than has been assumed. He spied on Neville Chamberlain for MI6 and the Foreign Office.
He arrived at Southampton in May 1951 and immediately told Blunt what Philby had found out about the investigation of Maclean.
One top FO official put Burgess’s behaviour down to “innocent eccentricity”.Burgess not only spied for Moscow, but on behalf of competing factions within the British government. Guy Burgess, (born 1911, Devonport, Devon, Eng.—died Aug. 30, 1963, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.), British diplomat who spied for the Soviet Union in World War II and early in the Cold War period. Trivia (1) Blunt and Cairncross were offered immunity from prosecution before being outed many years later. He seemed to charm anyone he sought out, including Churchill, and attracted an astonishing array of contacts, as well as lovers, as he flitted between MI5, MI6, the BBC and the FO. While the character of Burgess is a gift to a writer, flamboyant, self destructive, promiscuous, risk taking - Lownie weaves his remarkable story through an expertly painted historical narrative. He spied on Neville Chamberlain for MI6 and the Foreign Office. They include 19 boxes on Burgess.How could Burgess, someone so indiscreet, a homosexual (at a time when homosexual relations were illegal), someone so promiscuous, frequently extremely drunk, with breath smelling of booze and tobacco and egg stains on his jumpers, with grime under his finger nails, and who committed a number of drink-driving offences, not just survive in the bohemian circles of the British establishment (that included Victor Rothschild, Harold Nicolson and Clarissa Churchill, Winston’s niece, among many others), but thrive among senior MI5 and MI6 officers and diplomats in the very centre of Whitehall and its powerful and influential decision-making? The Burgess family's English roots can be traced to the arrival in Britain in 1592 of Abraham de Bourgeous de Chantilly, a refugee from the Huguenot religious persecutions in France. Burgess a spy, unthinkable. Andrew Lownie's biography of Guy Burgess is that rare achievement - a historical biography of considerable political and human complexity that is also a page turner.