Climate of Treason, which exposed Anthony Blunt and led to a period of "spy mania" in Britain. Boyle's exhaustive account of the Burgess–Maclean–Philby–Blunt circle mentioned Driberg as a friend of Burgess, "of much the same background, tastes and views", but made no allegations that he was part of an espionage ring. In this atmosphere, Pincher published Their Trade is Treachery (1981), in which he maintained that Driberg had been recruited by MI5 to spy on the Communist Party while still a schoolboy at Lancing, and that he was later "in the KGB's pay as a double agent". Other writers added further details; the former British Intelligence officer Peter Wright, in Spycatcher (1987), alleged that Driberg had been "providing material to a Czech controller for money". The former Kremlin archivist Vasili Mitrokhin asserted that the Soviets had blackmailed Driberg into working for the KGB by threatening to expose his homosexuality. In a 2016 biography of Burgess, Andrew Lownie reports that Driberg was "caught in a KGB sting operation" at a Moscow urinal, and as a result agreed to work as a Soviet agent. The weight of information, and its constant repetition, made an apparently strong case against Driberg, and former friends such as Mervyn Stockwood, the Bishop of Southwark, became convinced that he had indeed betrayed his country. Other friends and colleagues were more sceptical. According to ex-Labour MP Reginald Paget, not even the security services were "lunatic enough to recruit a man like Driberg", who was famously indiscreet and could never keep a secret. Mitrokhin's "blackmail" story is questioned by historian Jeff Sharlet, on the grounds that by the 1950s and 1960s Driberg's homosexuality had been an open secret in British political circles for many years; he frequently boasted of his "rough trade" conquests to his colleagues. The journalist A. N. Wilson quotes Churchill commenting years before that "Tom Driberg is the sort of person who gives sodomy a bad name". Pincher, however, argued that as homosexual acts were criminal offences in Britain until 1967, Driberg was still vulnerable to blackmail, although he also claimed that the MI5 connection secured Driberg a lifelong immunity from prosecution. Driberg's colleague Michael Foot denied Pincher's claim that Margaret Thatcher, when prime minister, had made a secret agreement with Foot to protect Driberg if Foot, in turn, would remain silent about the supposed treachery of Roger Hollis, another of Pincher's recently dead targets. Wheen