Mar
29
Dundee is Moscow’s stunt double
Imagine waking up on a cold wintry morning and heading to work in Dundee city centre only to be greeted by the infamous hammer and sickle flag flying high above the Caird hall. You might be tempted to conclude that whilst you were sleeping the Russians invaded the great city of Dundee and have turned it into their stronghold in Britain.
In the winter of 1983 chances are that a few Dundonian’s must have experienced this when the Caird Hall and other parts of Dundee were dressed up to resemble Soviet Russia for the filming of the BBC drama “An Englishman Abroad”. It seems difficult to imagine now, but this must have been a thoroughly unnerving site for many people considering the Cold War was raging and the Able Archer training exercise took place in the same year and is described by historians as the closest the world had ever come to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Tensions between the Eastern Bloc and the Western world were also at an all time high because of the Soviet’s ongoing war in Afghanistan.
“An Englishman abroad” was a BBC drama filmed in Glasgow and Dundee and is based on an encounter in Moscow in 1958 between Australian actress, Carol Browne and notorious spy Guy Burgess who had defected to the Soviet Union and was living in a shabby apartment in Moscow.
The scene where Guy Burgess (played by Alan Bates) is walking through the heart of Moscow dressed as a typical Englishman surrounded by Russian’s in fur hats was actually filmed partly in Dundee’s Reform Street and partly in Glasgow.
The play is about how Burgess misses some of the great characteristics of British life and that his Marxist ideals compare badly with the reality of life in Russia. He is happy to have contact with the actress Carol Browne who is Australian and can see the differences between Britain and Russia from a neutral point. Burgess even persuades the actress to pick up a new suit from his favourite tailor when she is London.
The play was created by Alan Bennett and was adapted for the stage five years later in 1988. There is a dry comedy running through the programme largely fuelled by Alan Bates’s excellent portrayal of Burgess though it’s fair to say that Burgess misses what epitomises being English rather than British.