Micky Burn

Captain Michael Clive Burn, MC (11 December 1912 – 3 September 2010) was an English journalist, commando, writer and poet.

Early life

Michael Clive "Micky" Burn, born 11 December 1912 in London, was the eldest of four children, the son of Clive Burn (1882–1955) and Phyllis Burn (née Stoneham; 1883–1968).

Burn's father was secretary and solicitor to the Duchy of Cornwall, becoming a trusted confidant of the King. His mother's family was instrumental in developing the golf-and-gambling resort of Le Touquet, the fashionable seaside resort in Hauts-de-France.

Initially educated at Winchester College, Burn spent only one year at New College, Oxford before the social seductions of Le Touquet won out. As he himself put it, he was not sent down: having done none of the work expected of him, he simply did not go back, choosing instead to initiate a writing career by ghosting the autobiography of "Bentley Boy" Sir Henry Birkin.

Burn spent time in Florence, befriending Alice Keppel, the former mistress of Edward VII. A bisexual man, his lovers included later Soviet Union spy Guy Burgess. On two occasions during the 1930s Burn took himself to the police to avoid being blackmailed for the crime of homosexual conduct.

At Colditz Burn studied for an Oxford diploma and wrote a novel fictionalizing his years as a prisoner, which was published as Yes, Farewell in 1946. Ben Macintyre wrote that it was the only good novel from a Colditz prisoner of war. On liberation, Burn sent dispatches to The Times that appeared in the newspaper on 19 and 21 April 1945; they were the first detailed published descriptions of a prisoner-of-war camp.

While at Colditz, Burn had received a Red Cross parcel from an old Dutch friend and former lover, Ella van Heemstra. After his release from Colditz, Burn sent packages with food and cigarettes to van Heemstra. The food helped the malnourished van Heemstra and her daughter, Audrey (future actress and humanitarian activist Audrey Hepburn), survive the hardships following the end of the war. Van Heemstra sold the cigarettes for penicillin on the black market to treat the seriously ill Hepburn, perhaps saving her life.

Burn ended the war as a captain.

After the Second World War When the war ended Burn returned to The Times. His first assignment – while waiting for a visa to Moscow as permanent correspondent – was to Vienna. After several months of waiting in vain for the Moscow visa, he suggested to the editor of The Times that he instead go behind the Iron Curtain to Hungary to observe the government takeover by the Hungarian Communist Party supported by the Red Army. As a consequence, he became the main British reporter on the political purges and the faked trial of Cardinal József Mindszenty.

Burn wrote nine books of non-fiction, four novels and six books of poetry. He enjoyed reading his poetry aloud at regional poetry events. He also wrote a play, The Night of the Ball, which opened in London's West End in 1954 starring Gladys Cooper.

Private life Although Burn left Colditz believing that he was entirely homosexual, he almost immediately met and fell in love with a woman, despite continuing to have affairs with men. Burn married Mary Booker (1897–1974) on 27 March 1947; Booker had been divorced from her husband in 1926. The couple moved to North Wales where Bertrand Russell and his last wife, Edith, became first neighbours and then close friends before Russell's death in 1970. Following Mary's death in August 1974, Burn discovered her love letters to Richard Hillary, with whom she had been in love from December 1941 until Hillary was killed in January 1943. Burn subsequently wrote his book Mary & Richard (1988) as a commemoration.

Burn's autobiography, Turned Towards the Sun, was published in 2003.

Biographies

Mickey Burn's experiences as a commando and as a prisoner of war form the centrepiece of Peter Stanley's book, Commando to Colditz: Mickey Burn's Journey To the Far Side of Tears, published by Murdoch Books, Sydney, 2009.

A documentary about the life of Micky Burn, titled Turned Towards the Sun, was filmed in 2008 and 2009 and produced by James Dorrian, Nick Golding, Laura Morris, Greg Olliver and associate produced by Robert Ozn. It premièred at the British Film Institute (BFI) London Film Festival in 2012. The film's director, Greg Olliver, earned a BFI Grierson Award nomination. (Olliver also co-directed Lemmy, the documentary about Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead.)