A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy

by Deborah McDonald, Jeremy Dronfield

Overview

Moura Budberg: spy, adventurer, charismatic seductress and mistress of two of the century’s greatest writers, the Russian aristocrat Baroness Moura Budberg was born in 1892 to indulgence, pleasure and selfishness. But after she met the British diplomat and secret agent Robert Bruce Lockhart, she sacrificed everything for love, only to be betrayed.

When Lockhart arrived in Revolutionary Russia in 1918, his official mission was Britain’s envoy to the new Bolshevik government, yet his real assignment was to create a network of agents and plot the downfall of Lenin. Lockhart soon got to know Moura and they began a passionate affair, even though Moura was spying on him for the Bolsheviks. But when Lockhart’s plot unravelled, she would forsake everything in an attempt to protect him from Lenin’s secret police. Fleeing to a life of exile in England and taking a string of new lovers, including Maxim Gorky and H. G. Wells, Moura later spied for Stalin and for Britain amidst the web of scandal surrounding the Cambridge spies. Through all this she clung to the hope that Lockhart would finally return to her.

Grippingly narrated, this is the first biography of Moura Budberg to use the full range of previously unexamined letters, diaries and documents. An incredible true story of passion, espionage and double crossing that encircled the globe, A Very Dangerous Woman brings her extraordinary world vividly to life with dramatic resonances to rival the most sensational novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780747972
Publisher:	Oneworld Publications
Publication date:	02/09/2016
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	1,097,190
Product dimensions:	7.70(w) x 5.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Deborah McDonald is the author of Clara Collet 1860-1948: An Educated Working Woman and The Prince, His Tutor and the Ripper: The Evidence Linking James Kenneth Stephen to the Whitechapel Murders. She lives on the Isle of Wight.

Jeremy Dronfield is a writer, biographer and novelist.

Table of Contents

Map vii

Descendants of Ignatiy Zakrevsky viii

Illustration Credits ix

Preface xi

Prologue 1

Part 1 Flouting All Conventions: 1916-1918

1 The Eve of Revolution 5

2 Choosing Sides 17

3 Red Winter 34

4 The British Agent 41

5 'What Children We Were' 53

6 Passion and Intrigue 65

7 Old Enemies, Strange Alliances 79

8 A Hair's Breadth from War 92

9 Across the Border 103

Part 2 Love and Survival: 1918-1919

10 The Lockhart Plot 117

11 The Knock on the Door in the Night 132

12 Sacrificial Offering 143

13 The End of Everything… 160

14 Se Metrre en Quatre 169

Part 3 In Exile: 1919-1924

15 'We're All Iron Now' 185

16 Baroness Budberg 202

17 One Perfect Thing 216

Part 4 England: 1924-1946

18 Love and Anger 227

19 Not Such a Fool 244

20 A Cheat and a Liar 260

21 The Mysterious Death of Maxim Gorky 270

22 A Very Dangerous Woman 281

23 'Secretly Working for the Russians' 290

Part 5 Moura's Salon: 1946-1974

24 The Movie Mogul 305

25 A Russian Patriot 315

26 … The End of Everything 327

Notes 341

Bibliography 384

Index 393

Editorial Reviews

‘An extraordinarily complex story based on a fabulous cache of rich material... the end result really is an example of truth being stranger than fiction’

Good Book Guide

‘Conjures up a vivid and alluring version of old Russia’

Mail on Sunday

‘This book could read like a thriller, yet the thorough research here provides a weightier feast... impressive... alive... a well-researched and well-ordered biography’

Spectator

‘A rollicking good read’

Country Life

‘A thrilling new biography of baroness and double agent Moura Budberg.... Brave and multi-faceted, a mosaic monument to a mistress of deceit.’

Russia Beyond the Headlines

‘McDonald and Dronfield’s summaries of events during the revolutionary period make a coherent narrative from a bafflingly complex series of events’

The Guardian

‘An astoundingly unbelievable life well retold in this gripping new biography. Well-written too. The book’s account of the Lockhart Affair is particularly fascinating, recreating the paranoid, anti-Western world that was Soviet Russia in the late 19-teens and early 1920s.’

Russian Life

‘Temptress, seductress, sexploiter, call her what you will, Moura had espionage running through her veins, and all is revealed in this fascinating account of her mysterious life.’

author of Operation Garbo Nigel West

‘An incredible, beautifully written story that succeeds not only in giving a powerful insight into the lengths to which some people will go to preserve their very existence, but an absorbing and colourful account of the individuals and events that changed the world in the first half of the twentieth century.’

Susan Ottaway author Sisters

‘There is an echo of foxy, seductive Scarlett O'Hara about Moura Budberg’

Herald

‘The tale of Baroness Moura Budberg is a splendid one... entertaining and well-researched.’

Dr. Mark Galeotti

‘[The authors] have done a sterling job of piecing together the pieces of this mysterious, peripatetic life... they are very clear about the limits of what can and cannot be known from the extant evidence’

Daily Telegraph

'Hard to go wrong with Moura's combustible life, and the authors relish her excesses'.

Independent Whig.

'Riveting biography...of [Moura Budberg's] remarkable life...Dangerous woman, indeed'.

Independent on Sunday

'Hard to go wrong with Moura's combustible life, and the authors relish her excesses'.

Independent

"McDonald and Dronfield convincingly capture Moura's perilous sensuality."
— The Wall Street Journal

"Temptress, seductress, sexploiter, call her what you will, Moura had espionage running through her veins, and all is revealed in this fascinating account of her mysterious life."
— Nigel West, author of Operation Garbo

"A thrilling new biography of baroness and double agent Moura Budberg…. Brave and multi-faceted, a mosaic monument to a mistress of deceit."
— Russia Beyond the Headlines

"An astoundingly unbelievable life well retold in this gripping new biography. Well written, too. The book’s account of the Lockhart Affair is particularly fascinating, recreating the paranoid, anti-Western world that was Soviet Russia in the late 19-teens and early 1920s."
— Russian Life

"The authors draw on diaries, correspondence, and newly released files to create a powerful study that attracts sympathy toward their subject. It also produces a great snapshot of life in Russia during the collapse of the czarist regime through the early part of the Joseph Stalin era. Recommended for fans of espionage and strong-willed women as well as biography connoisseurs."
— Library Journal

"A fast-paced story of European intrigue, featuring an enigmatic, strong-willed woman who married twice and whose lovers included Alexander Kerensky, Maxim Gorky, and H.G. Wells.... Moura’s survival story is fascinating."
— Publishers Weekly

"An attempt to introduce the world to a female spy far more successful than Mata Hari and just as captivating.... Intriguing."
— Kirkus Reviews

" A Very Dangerous Woman pulls together all the chimerical threads of Moura’s life into a well-written and carefully annotated biography that often reads like a romantic thriller – with photos of all the key real-life characters. I’d recommend it to anyone, especially those interested in the Russian Revolution, its soiled aftermath, or the elusive Moura.”
— Historical Novels Review

"An absorbing and colourful account of the individuals and events that changed the world in the first half of the twentieth century."
— Susan Ottaway, author Sisters, Secrets and Sacrifice: The True Story of WWII Special Agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne

From the Publisher

04/15/2015
Great biographies can easily transport a reader into a different time and place, especially those places that are often in hurly-burly. McDonald (The Prince, His Tutor and the Ripper) and Dronfield (The Locust Farm) detail the life of Moura Budberg (1892–1974), a noble Russian émigré who was a European socialite and, more important, a Soviet-British double spy. The authors draw on diaries, correspondence, and newly released files to create a powerful study that attracts sympathy toward their subject. It also produces a great snapshot of life in Russia during the collapse of the czarist regime through the early part of the Joseph Stalin era. Survival was the main thrust of why Budberg became a spy—and was behind whom she chose as confidants and partners. Sympathy was earned because of what she lost in terms of love, and those close to her who were killed. This book is in good company with recent works about espionage such as Ben Macintyre's A Spy Among Friends and Karen Abbott's Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy. VERDICT Recommended for fans of espionage and strong-willed women as well as biography connoisseurs.—Jacob Sherman, John Peace Lib., Univ. of Texas-San Antonio

Library Journal

2015-03-05
An attempt to introduce the world to a female spy far more successful than Mata Hari and just as captivating. Moura Zakrevskaya (1891-1974) was born in Ukraine to a family with land, wealth, and a connection to the czar. Despite her origins, her instinct for survival and a liberal political temperament led her to spy for the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. After leaving Russia in 1921, though, evidence of her continued spy activity is largely circumstantial. She was often in the right place at the right time to engage in espionage; travel in and out of restricted areas was frequently easier than seemed legitimate; and both the general gossip and the files kept by European governments concluded that she was likely a spy for one entity or another for most of her life. For the most part, McDonald (The Prince, His Tutor and the Ripper: The Evidence Linking James Kenneth Stephen to the Whitechapel Murders, 2007, etc.) and Dronfield (The Locust Farm, 2013, etc.) craft a colorful tale, but they impart little of the urgency that makes spy stories so successful. Combined with the amount of historical and familial detail necessary to make sense of Zakrevskaya's life, this makes for an informative but rarely thrilling read. The biography is thorough for a subject as careful and secretive as an assumed spy, and while the authors make an effective argument that their subject lived a double life, there is little payoff in terms of hard documentation. Prodigious research and endnotes prove mostly that Zakrevskaya was incredibly effective at survival, generally through her many relationships and affairs. The story retains an air of mystery, much like the woman herself, but in a work promising "the lives, loves and lies of Russia's most seductive spy," that mysterious nature is more disappointing than tantalizing. Intriguing but lacking the salacious detail and hard evidence necessary for true fascination.

Kirkus Reviews

Read More