Britain's Security Service tried and failed to interview the poet WH Auden over his connections with KGB double agent Guy Burgess, according to archive papers declassified today.
Burgess, part of the "Cambridge Five" spy ring that infiltrated British intelligence during World War Two, had telephoned Auden twice on the eve of the spy's defection to the Soviet Union in May 1951.
Auden, who knew Burgess, missed the calls and apparently did not return them. But the Security Service, known as MI5, was desperate to trace the calls and was keen to interview Auden for details on Burgess's background.
Auden, whose centenary is celebrated this year, was staying at the London flat of poet Stephen Spender ahead of his annual trip to the Italian island of Ischia off the Naples coast.
Spender took the calls and said he told Auden about them, but Auden initially claimed he learned about them a month later. When Spender told reporters about the calls, the press descended on Auden, who was by then at his Ischia villa.
The Daily Express newspaper, in a colourful report from Ischia, speculated that Burgess had been planning to flee to Auden's "white-painted home on this sun-seared island."
The publicity sparked a frenzy of undercover activity in London and Rome, with Auden's phone line being tapped and intermediaries being used to contact him and Spender.
The documents reveal an urgent and sometimes panicked flurry of messages between London and the Rome representative of MI6 - Britain's overseas intelligence agency. One exchange reveals that an "unknown woman" had telephoned Auden on the day of Burgess's last call "and enquired about her son".
The urgent reply was that "we cannot repeat not use (the information) for police inquiry without giving impression to Auden that his line was tapped. You will recall that he is an American subject."
Auden had become a naturalised US citizen after leaving Britain to live in America in January 1939.