The Old Country, an Alan Bennett play that dates back to 1977, covers much the same ground as An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution. The central character is clearly based on one of the Cambridge Spies — in this case, a former Foreign Office official called Hilary, who is rotting away in the Soviet Union while pining for the comforts of home. This figure — the ruling-class dissident overcome with nostalgia for the country he’s betrayed — clearly fascinates Bennett. Does he see a parallel between his experience as a semi-closeted homosexual and the secret life of the Cambridge Spies? Or is this figure simply a handy way of dramatising Bennett’s own ambivalence about Britain — loathing it and loving it at the same time?
Unlike the Guy Burgess character in An Englishman Abroad, Hilary is a heterosexual. The reason for this appears to be so Bennett can contrast him with his brother-in-law, the less sympathetically drawn Duff. (The action of the play revolves around Duff’s attempts to persuade Hilary to come home and face the music during a flying visit to Moscow.) In the least successful scene, Duff is left alone with another British expat — a young man named Eric — who, it turns out, is an ex-lover of his. No matter that this is an extraordinary coincidence. It enables Bennett to make the point that, from a moral point of view, Duff is no different from Hilary. Like him, he’s led a double life, concealing his true nature from his wife.
In some respects, The Old Country feels a little dated. In 1977, the Soviet Union seemed less monstrous than it does today. As a PPE-ist at Oxford in the early Eighties, I was constantly debating the issue of whether the USSR and the USA were morally equivalent.
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