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John Cairncross was born in Scotland in 1913. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge where he metKim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. All of them became secret supporters of the Communist Party. Soon afterwards James Klugman put Cairncross into contact with Samuel Cahan, an agent of the KGB.

In 1936 Cairncross joined the Foreign Office. During the Second World War he worked at the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park. These codes and ciphers were passed to the Soviet Union. In the later stages of the war Cairncross was based at the main headquarters of MI6.

In 1951 Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean defected to the Soviet Union. When MI5 search Burgess's flat in London they discovered papers written by Cairncross. When interviewed by Jim Skardon and Arthur Martin he admitted he had passed information to Burgess. However, he insisted that he did not know that Burgess was a spy.

Arthur Martin, a MI5 investigator, interviewed Michael Straight, an American who had studied at Trinity College, Cambridge in January 1964. While at university Straight became friends with Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. Straight claimed that Blunt had tried to recruit him to become a Soviet spy.

Arthur Martin and Jim Skardon had interviewed Blunt eleven times since 1951. Martin, now armed with Straight's story, went to see Anthony Blunt again. This time he made a confession. He admitted being a Soviet agent and named John Cairncross, Peter Ashby, Brian Symon and Leo Long as spies he had recruited. Cairncross was now interviewed by MI5 and made a full confession in return for not being prosecuted.

Cairncross worked for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome until his retirement. John Cairncross died in 1995.

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(1) BBC News (13th September, 1919)

In the 1930s a number of young men at Cambridge University were recruited as Soviet spies. They became known by the KGB as the 'magnificent five' but were better known in Britain as the Cambridge spy ring.

They were not motivated by financial gain but by the belief that capitalism was corrupt and that the Soviet Union offered a better model for society.

The Cambridge spy ring was informally led by Harold 'Kim' Philby. He and his friends later moved into jobs in British Intelligence and the Foreign Office where they had access to top secret information. They spent their working lives passing valuable information to the Soviet Union.

(2) Peter Wright, Spycatcher (1987)

Cairncross was a different character entirely. He was a clever, rather frail-looking Scotsman with a shock of red hair and a broad accent. He came from a humble working-class background but, possessed of a brilliant intellect, he made his way to Cambridge in the 1930s, becoming an open Communist before dropping out on the instructions of the Russians and applying to join the Foreign Office.

Cairncross was one of Arthur's original suspects in 1951, after papers containing Treasury information were found in Burgess' flat after the defection. Evelyn McBarnet recognized the handwriting as that of John Cairncross. He was placed under continuous surveillance, but although he went to a rendezvous with his controller, the Russian never turned up. When Arthur confronted Cairncross in 1952 he denied being a spy, claiming that he had supplied information to Burgess as a friend, without realizing that he was a spy. Shortly afterward, Cairncross left Britain and did not return until 1967.