It was almost midnight on Friday 25th May, 1951. Two men stood at the dock in Southampton as the steamship to St Malo loomed into view. Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean had met at Cambridge University more than twenty years before; they had been friends, at one time lovers, but their paths had diverged. Maclean was serious and moralistic, an efficient diplomat with a young family. Burgess was charming and charismatic, but unreliable and infamous for his partying. This evening they were united with a single purpose: getting out of the country before Maclean was exposed as a spy.
A Queer History of Cambridgeshire 