Donald and Melinda Maclean: Idealism and Espionage

Donald and Melinda Maclean: Idealism and Espionage, uses family correspondence, unpublished diaries, and other archival material. It also makes extensive use of the official records of the Foreign Office and the United States Department of State to establish just what information Maclean had access to and was therefore in a position to transmit to Moscow. In order to help document the lives of Donald and Melinda Maclean in the Soviet Union, hitherto largely unknown in the West. Donald Maclean was privy to the Anglo-French discussions around Munich and the run up to what became the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This changes our understanding of those negotiations. During and immediately after World War II Maclean was a primary liaison official between the British embassy in Washington, the State Department and the Atomic Energy Commission.

Donald and Melinda Maclean: Idealism and Espionage documents what he knew about US/UK relations and, therefore, what Stalin knew. When Maclean was transferred to Cairo, then the key British embassy in the Mediterranean, he was involved with the early cold war plans for atomic attacks against the Soviet Union from bases in Suez. This affects our understanding of Stalin’s actions during that period. Finally, during the early Korean War period Maclean was head of the British Foreign Office’s American Department, once again in a position to share with the Soviet Union great amounts of information about US/UK relations and plans. In all of this his American wife, Melinda Marling Maclean, was his companion and partner in his work for the Foreign Office and the Soviet intelligence services.