Alan Bennett is a renowned playwright and essayist, a succession of whose plays have been staged at the Royal National Theatre and whose screenplay for The Madness of King George was nominated for an Academy Award. He made his first stage appearance with Beyond the Fringe and his latest play was The Lady in the Van with Maggie Smith. Episodes from his award-winning Talking Heads series have been shown on PBS. His first novel, The Clothes They Stood Up In, was published in 2000. He lives in London.

Michael Gambon is Guy Burgess and Penelope Wilton the actress Coral Browne in Bennett's re-telling of a real-life incident. Whilst touring 'Hamlet' Moscow with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1958, Browne is astonished to have Burgess appear in her dressing room. Having disappeared from England in 1951 together with fellow diplomat Donald Maclean, spy Burgess is a wanted man. Bennett's take on the encounter is both poignant and comic, and the play examines his life in exile, his love of England and his even greater love of Russia. This full-cast dramatisation was originally broadcast on BBC World Service.