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

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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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.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 7, 2015
ISBN9781780747095
A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy
Author

Deborah McDonald

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.

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Rating: 3.9473683210526316 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The Book "A very Dangerous Woman" by Deborah McDonald and Jeremy Dronfield brought to life Baroness Moura Budberg. This was a woman who spent her entire life keeping her life in secrecy, never letting anyone, even her family know what she was really like. I found it hard to put this book down. You are given such a vivid and very well researched account of the life of a woman who would do just about anything to survive in an era when women were tools to be used. Moura Budberg was able to captivate men in positions that were able to further her self interests and help those that she cared for. The only man that she ever gave her heart and soul to was Robert Bruce Lockhart who eventually betrayed that love. She was married with children but it was a marriage that gave her the freedom to live a life as she saw fit. This left her vowing to never let anyone that close to her again. I came away from the book with the opinion that she could have prevented Robert Bruce Lockhart from betraying her. She could have left Russia with him but she gave the excuse that she could not leave her mother or children. Her husband was murdered, her mother died, and she gave her children little of her time. Moura Budberg was a very complex person that this book tried to flesh out what little is know of her. I would highly recommend this book to anyone.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I received a copy of A Very Dangerous Woman, by Deborah McDonald, through the Firstreads giveaway program in exchange for an honest review.The Baroness Moura Budberg was born into Russian aristocracy prior to the Russian Revolution. She had a strong survival instinct and managed to navigate her way through several regimes through cunning, her network of connections and knowing when to use her feminine 'gifts'. She found herself in the midst of politics, espionage, literary circles and even in the British film industry. Baroness Budberg's life was a mystery even to those closest to her, her daughter included. Deborah McDonald and Jeremy Dronfield managed to piece together most of her life through correspondence and declassified secret service agency files. However, a shadow still casts over pieces of her history and her whereabouts. A snippet on the cover claims that the book reads like a thriller. It was not a page turner, but Budberg's story was fascinating and the writing style was engaging and well-researched. The book would be a good read for those interested in Russian History, European history, espionage, stories with strong female protagonists, politics, romance, Maxim Gorky, H.G. Wells, and the early British film industry.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Baroness Moura Budberg was born Maria Zakrevsky, a child of the landed gentry in the Ukraine - her father was a high-level lawyer for the Tsar. Early on she decided she liked the life of wealth and nobility, so she married into a large Estonian aristocratic family - the von Benkendorfs. Moura, though, loved the life in Petrograd, and because she was raised by an English governess, became intimately involved in the affairs of British diplomats and spies, even finding her lifelong love there. But in 1918, the Russian Revolution brought all this luxury and privilege crashing down. Moura survived, often by playing the British and the Soviets off each other, spying for each side against the other. And here her seductiveness came into play as she used her sexuality to integrate into powerful society. And basically, that's how she lived her life from then on - always with a lover to take care of her, always surrounded by society people, always trading on the information and gossip she gathered. McDonald and Dronfield have written a pretty good biography of a very interesting woman found at the intersection of some very interesting times. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call her a "very dangerous woman" - though this is a quote from a British intelligence report on her later in life - as she seemed to trade in gossip and rumor more than anything else. (In fairness, there's some indication she may have had her hand in at least a few deaths, including her first husband.) But for a different sort of view on the events of the early to mid-20th century Europe, this is highly recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    As seems to frequently be the case, I think the author/publisher went a bit wild with the subtitle of this book. Maria (Moura) Budberg was born into an aristocratic Ukrainian family around 1891. She was very intelligent, reveled in being the center of attention, and was extremely charismatic, one of those people that others can't seem to help but like.She certainly did some spying against Germany, set up as a bit of a double agent, during WWI, and did her share of whispering important tidbits down the line to the British throughout the years following the Russian revolution. However, facts about was she/wasn't she spying past the 1920s aren't really available. There was largely just an awful lot of rumor, some of which she created herself. Whatever hints we have, they are simply hints and there really isn't any hard evidence and there will likely never be any.That being said, it was an interesting book because she was an interesting woman. While she destroyed all of her own papers, many letters she sent were kept and she was associated with many interesting people throughout her life, including Maxim Gorky and HG Wells. The book is well written and scrupulously end-noted. It took about a third of the way in to really grip me, but made for a good read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A densely rich book about a fascinating woman. As noted below, I too found myself wishing for a little bit more story-telling. A story about a female Russian spy should not be dry! Overall, it was an incredible read about a woman with an incredible ability to adapt and survive.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Mixed feelings about this book. (Not unlike its main character - such a controversial figure). Certainly a worthy history lesson. But in the first half of the book I found myself guiltily thinking: I wish Robert Massie was the author - he is so good at biographies; or Ben Macintyre - his book about double agent Kim Philby was excellent... Maybe it was the double authorship that I minded - I couldn't see an individual writing style. Plus, the abundance of quotations on every page, though appropriate to the subject matter, was distracting from the narrative itself. (Though, of course, it showed what a meticulous and thorough research was done by the authors). Still, a lot of speculations, instead of facts. I would rather speculations were not mentioned if they were not supported by facts. Gossip should not be part of biography. Also, the title doesn't really reflect the contents - Moura Budberg was much more than "a very dangerous woman"... "Mysterious" would be the right word. Even to quote the authors: "Moura liked being mysterious; she liked keeping people guessing"....That said, the narrative kept my attention throughout, especially in the last one third of the book. There were some amazingly insightful sentences, though I wish there were more... A truly revealing portrait of both Maxim Gorky and H.G.Wells (both Moura's lovers, among others). Gorky especially became alive for me - I never knew of this side of his. For me, Moura's true personality emerged in the last chapters - maybe more material was available about her later life... The circle of interesting and politically weighty personalities that were attracted to her - some to her personally, some just to be around her - is astounding: A.Kerensky, Bertrand Russell, W. S. Maugham, Hemingway, Graham Greene - to name a few, though her only true love - Robert B. Lockhart - was much less known and influential. I am tempted to search the books by Chekhov and Gorky that she translated, among many others, as she was supposed to be very good at that too. (I must say, though, even if biography should be truthful - why be so petty and mention her shoplifting incident, why put such a disgraceful mark on a personality that in so many other ways was larger than life. I know, many would not agree, but that's what I think...).

Book preview

A Very Dangerous Woman - Deborah McDonald

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