Donald Maclean (spy) - London Deskbound

London Deskbound

Maclean's career did not seem to suffer from his breakdown, though his spirit remained troubled.

Maclean went to his local pub in Kent, with Jay Sheers, his brother-in-law. He railed bitterly at his life and his job; he mocked at himself as a sheep among hordes of other sheep, going off to London every day with his black hat and neat black suit and little black briefcase; and he said that he was sick of it all and longed desperately to "cut adrift"

The journalist Cyril Connolly described him vividly as he struck him in London in 1951. "He had lost his serenity, his hands would tremble, his face was usually a livid yellow ... he was miserable and in a very bad way. In conversation, a kind of shutter would fall as if he had returned to some basic and incommunicable anxiety."