Guy Burgess was a British diplomat and a notorious Soviet double agent, active from the 1930s until his defection in 1951. He was a key member of the infamous Cambridge Five, a ring of spies who passed British intelligence to the Soviet Union during World War II and the early Cold War. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he used his position within the Foreign Office to access and leak classified information. In 1951, facing exposure, he fled to Moscow with fellow spy Donald Maclean, where he lived the remainder of his life in exile.