Single Spies

Single Spies gathers two plays by Alan Bennett, both drawn from the lives of Englishmen who passed secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Rather than treating these men as thriller villains, Bennett looks at them with a wry, human eye, paying attention to the social world of Britain's establishment that shaped them.

An Englishman Abroad is set in Moscow, where the defected diplomat Guy Burgess lives in exile. An English actress visiting the city meets him, and the play follows the awkward, unexpected friendship that grows between the two, with Bennett exploring nostalgia, loneliness and national identity along the way.

A Question of Attribution imagines an encounter between Anthony Blunt, the art historian who served as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, and the monarch herself. The play centres on a painting and on the judgement that surrounds it, and uses the meeting to examine loyalty, class and discretion.