By way of what Americans call full disclosure, I should say that Sam Tanenhaus is now the editor of the New York Times Book Review, for which I sometimes write; before that he worked for Vanity Fair, and when he came to London to cover David Irving’s bizarre libel action he invited himself to lunch. But when I first read this marvellous book with deep admiration I could have said truthfully, ‘I don’t know Tanenhaus. So far as I know I never laid eyes on him.’
When I had laid eyes on Hiss he seemed a most affable old traitor, although bland and affectless to a degree which, in hindsight, suggests that he may have been another victim, one more human personality hollowed out by the Communist experience. As to Chambers, he believed that he was a player in a great moral as well as political drama. Maybe he was right. At the end of one lengthy interrogation by the FBI, he was asked if had anything more to add; ever the self-conscious or grandiose literary man, he scrawled on a piece of paper, ‘E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle,’ the last line of the Inferno. But maybe he was right there too. At the end of a century unique for its man-made horrors, then we came forth and once more saw the stars.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s new book Yo, Blair! is published this week.
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