Codename Intelligentsia: The Life and Times of the Honourable Ivor Montagu, Filmmaker, Communist, Spy

Ivor Montagu was a wealthy British heir who founded The Film Society,collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock,directed comedies,worked in Hollywood,made documentaries in Spain,and was a secret agent of the Comintern and a Soviet spy. He was blind to the Stalin regime's atrocities.

Format: Hardback
Length: 448 pages
Publication date: 01 May 2018
Publisher: The History Press Ltd

He was the son of a hereditary peer, one of the wealthiest men in Britain. His childhood was privileged; at Cambridge, he flourished. At the age of 21, he founded The Film Society, and became a pioneering standard-bearer for film as art. He was a collaborator of Alfred Hitchcock, rescuing The Lodger and later producing his groundbreaking British thrillers The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, Secret Agent and Sabotage. He directed comedies from stories by H.G. Wells, worked in Hollywood with Eisenstein, and made documentaries in Spain during the Civil War. He lobbied for Trotsky to be granted asylum in the UK, and became a leading propagandist for the anti-fascist and Communist cause. Under the nose of MI5, who kept him under constant surveillance, he became a secret agent of the Comintern and a Soviet spy. He was a man of high intelligence and moral concern, yet he was blind to the atrocities of the Stalin regime. This is the remarkable story of Ivor Montagu, and of the burgeoning cinematic culture and left-wing politics of Britain between the wars. It is a story of restless energy, generosity of spirit, creative achievement and intellectual corruption.

Weight: 872g
Dimension: 239 x 165 x 39 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780750987059