26. Jack Hewit and the Cambridge Four

Not discussed in many references to the Cambridge spies, Jack "Jacky" Hewit was born May 17, 1917 in England. He tried a career as an English dancer and chorus boy. His relationships were complicated and nearly destructive to him. Over the course of his life Hewit was lovers with Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess and Christopher Isherwood. It is probably true that he was influenced by the work of the openly gay novelist, and friend of Isherwood, E. M. Forster.

In this context the comment of one of Guy Burgess' lovers, Jack Hewit, about the milieu in which they moved, is telling. 'There was a sort of gay intellectual freemasonry which you know nothing about. It was like the five concentric circles in the Olympic emblem. One person in one circle knew one in another and that's how people met.

Certainly all of the above were gay and openly so at a time that severe social prejudice against homosexuality was prevalent. Isherwood was also Burgess’ sometimes lover.

Hewit served as a civil servant and intelligence agent for Britain during WWII. He lived with Guy Burgess most often, at different periods in his life. According to Isherwood's diaries, Guy introduced Jack to Christopher toward the end of 1938. They went to Brussels with W. H. Auden for Christmas and Hewit is one of the subjects of Auden's poem "Ode to the New Year" (1939).

When Christopher left for America with Auden in January 1939, Jack rode with him in the cab to see him off and gave Christopher a champagne cork from the New Year's party in Brussels at which Auden had read his poem. Christopher later buried the cork in the park yard of his home in Los Angeles.

Hewit’s connection with Anthony Blunt had a significant impact on British intelligence. Blunt reported on the Soviet operation “XXX.” This was a closely-held operation. It involved copying documents inside the British diplomatic pouches.


Pouches were escorted to the receiving country’s home office. Actually most were escorted on trains. Since trains had station stops, an escort might find a “blonde” to “liaison” with. The local constables would offer to put the pouch in a safe. Surely one could trust the British Bobby.

While the escort was “involved” technicians could retrieve the pouches, break the seal, photograph all contents, and return it to the safe, undetectable. Blunt convinced Jacky Hewit tyo be a lure for gay couriers. They nevere complained about delays.

Jacky died December 30, 1997. Whether or not he was also a Soviet agent is to me unknown, but he activities. Interviews with him revealed the Zeitgeist of the late 1930s when the Cambridge group found each other. It sheds some light on just how it could have happened.

The fact that Burgess was homosexual, to a predatory degree, that Blunt was gay, and the involvement of Hewit gave impetus to the discrimination against gays in intelligence. Many outstanding gay men worked in intelligence and at least one, Alan Turing, probably helpd shorten the war by two years through his service at Bletchley Park in breaking the German Enigma cipher. He was treated very badly after the war, to the point of torture, for being a homosexual. Because a handful of men, who happened to be gay, were turncoats to their country does not allow for painting all homosexuals as potential traitors. It was not until Prime Minister Gordon Brown that the British government finally apologized for the way Turing and other gays were treated after WWII.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has apologized for the British government’s "horrifying" treatment a half-century ago of Alan Turing, the mathematical genius who played a key role in defeating Nazi Germany but was later convicted of "gross indecency" for having sex with another man.”
British gay activist Peter Tatchell said that Turing was one of an estimated 100,000 British gay men-- including playwright Oscar Wilde in 1895 -- convicted under Britain's "gross indecency" law, which was formally repealed in 2003.

While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back,'' Brown stated, "his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him.

Gordon Brown's message is clear," Graham-Cumming told AOL News. "Do not allow prejudice to color our thinking or actions.

(http://www.aolnews.com/story/gordon-brown-apologizes-for-treatment-of/666717)