John Cairncross
| John Cairncross | |
|---|---|
| Allegiance | Soviet Union |
| Service | Foreign Office The Government Code and Cypher School, Bletchley Park |
| Codename(s) | Liszt |
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| Born |
25 July 1913 Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, UK |
| Died | 8 October 1995 (aged 82) Herefordshire, England, UK |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater |
University of Glasgow The Sorbonne Trinity College, Cambridge |
John Cairncross (25 July 1913 – 8 October 1995) was a British civil servant who became an intelligence officer and spy during the Second World War. As a Soviet double agent, he passed to the Soviet Union the raw Tunny decrypts that influenced the Battle of Kursk. He was alleged to be the fifth member of the Cambridge Five.
Cairncross's father was the manager of an ironmonger's and his mother a primary school teacher. John Cairncoss was one of a family of eight, many of whom had distinguished careers. All three of his brothers became professors. One was the economist Sir Alexander Kirkland Cairncross (a.k.a. Alec Cairncross). The journalist Frances Cairncross is his niece. Cairncross grew up in Lesmahagow, a small town on the edge of moorland, near Lanark in the Central Belt of Scotland, and was educated at the Hamilton Academy (although his name appears as the 1928 winner of the Dux prize at Lesmahagow High School); the University of Glasgow; the Sorbonne and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied French and German.
After graduating, he took the British Civil Service exam and won first place. An article in the Glasgow Herald on 29 September 1936 noted that Cairncross had scored an "outstanding double success of being placed 1st in the Home List and 1st in the competition for the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service," and that he had been placed 5th in the (Glasgow University) bursary competition of 1930, and was also a Scholar and Bell Exhibitioner at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Cairncross worked initially in the Cabinet Office as a private secretary to Lord Hankey, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Later he transferred to the Foreign Office. It has been suggested that in 1937 he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, but he was not noted whilst at Cambridge for any political activity. He was regarded as rather austere and uncommunicative as an undergraduate.
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