HOW could a young man so entrenched in British society end up betraying his country by spying for the Russians?

That was the one of the questions of this Charleston Festival discussion with Andrew Lownie, biographer of double agent Guy Burgess and Adam Sisman, John le Carre’s biographer.

Burgess, one of the Cambridge Five, enjoyed a privileged upbringing and was educated at Eton before Cambridge.

While at university he was recruited by the Soviets and spent many years giving the Russians state secrets.

Lownie argued that with the fall of Empire, Burgess saw two super powers which would shape the 20th century: The Americans and the Russians.

He decided the latter’s communist ideals would lead to a better world and pledged his life – albeit secretly – to the cause.

During the discussion, it became clear both Burgess and le Carre, who was a British spy before turning his hand to fiction, shared many similarities.

Both endured troubled childhoods, both had a desire to belong and both were unrelentingly miserable.

Burgess, who in the early 1950s escaped to Moscow for fear of capture, in particular endured a particularly unhappy life.

He was unable to live as a homosexual in Russia and missed his mother terribly. He longed for summer afternoons of cricket, cucumber sandwiches and his Jane Austin novels. He died aged 52, having become increasingly dependent on alcohol.

A far cry indeed from Ian Fleming’s 007.