ONE of the big talking points this week has been Russia’s influence, and whether we’re being lured by their propaganda. There has even been red-hot talk of traitors, paranoia, humiliation and betrayal.

Has there been Russian meddling? “Calm down, it’s only a television programme,” some say. “Yes, but it proves the Russians have an influence on us”, say others.

I’m talking about Toffs, Queer and Traitors (BBC4, Monday). Why, what did you think I was talking about?

When you see that a documentary is from the Storyville strand then you know you’re in for a treat, and that’s exactly what this was. It was atmospheric, revealing, and provocative, taking us back to the old days of Cold War intrigue when spying and propaganda were carried out via delicate, dangerous plans and masquerades, and not by a bunch of unemployables holed up in a tweet-factory in Vladivostok.

Ah yes, the good old days. I can’t help wondering how spy novelists of the future will write about this so-called Second Cold War. The first gave us classic stories of midnight meetings on the Glienicke Bridge or hushed conversations in the shadow of the Berlin Wall; what a feast for writers to choose from!

But the John le Carre of the future will have a tough time eking drama out of today’s troll tweeters. Maybe there’s a thriller somewhere in a troll acquiring 17,000 followers, only to fall in love with one of them, lose his heart to her, and then realise, far too late, that the wee Union Jack on her Twitter profile is a disguise, for she is actually an agent of the state, and then … oh, I give up. Stick with Le Carre.

One of the most fascinating things about the Cold War is how thrilling and frightening it genuinely was. Yes, writers and directors have wrung a lot of good novels and spy flicks from it, but the bare reality needed no embellishment.

You’ll get the same horror, mystery and dread from a great non-fiction book about the era, such as The Dead Hand by David E Hoffman, than you will from any James Bond palaver. (There will be fewer glamorous girls, admittedly.) One of the Cold War’s most fascinating stories is that of the infamous Cambridge spy ring, where the Soviets managed to recruit some nice, posh, English chaps. These men had every advantage. It used to be said that being born English was to win “first prize in the lottery of life”.

I’m quite sure that adage no longer applies — poor old Britain has tumbled a long way since its glory days of empire and its “finest hour” — but it surely still meant something in the 1930s and 40s to nice boys of good family who were sent to Eton and Cambridge. Guy Burgess had such a winning lottery ticket, but that just wasn’t good enough for him.

Instead of relishing his cosy position within, or, at least, near the British Establishment, he railed against it. He was disgusted by the appeasement of the 1930s, and he and other young firebrands thought the upper-classes of Britain were “sucking up” to the Nazis.

If Britain was apparently chummy with the enemy, then where could you go to oppose Nazism? In stepped Russia. The Soviet Union, having had a revolution, seemed to offer an alternative for the aggrieved, angry young people.

However, Burgess had another reason for turning against his country. According to the programme, his homosexuality was a factor. In this era, homosexuality was still illegal, and this threw up a barrier between him and the state. In his eyes, the country did not respect him or see his lifestyle as legitimate, so why should he owe it any loyalty?

When he was recruited as a spy, his natural charm and good looks — plus his record as a boy from England’s best schools and university, gave him easy access to the British Establishment, and he found himself working for the BBC and interviewing Churchill. The Russians must have had a good understanding of the British class system of the era, knowing that a wee scruff from Glasgow or Liverpool wouldn’t be able to get such privileged access.

This wonderful documentary evoked the terrible, angry suffocation Burgess must have felt, but never let us forget he was, obviously, a traitor.

The programme also led the viewer to the debate about Hitler v Stalin. Every schoolchild in Britain is taught, quite rightly, that Hitler was a terrible dictator responsible for millions of deaths, but if we’re playing a numbers game — which is very crude but numbers are facts, after all, and must be acknowledged — then wasn’t Stalin equally murderous?

Some argue his regime killed more people than Hitler’s, so how noble was it to leap into the arms of the Soviet Union if you wanted to strike a blow against mass murder and repression?

There’s no such thing as a stark world of “goodies” and “baddies”, but the romanticism and anger of youth clearly likes to think so. But as youth fades, does hard reality kick in, making a fool of your previous convictions?

It seemed to with Burgess, who fled to Moscow and lived the rest of his days there in sad, forgotten obscurity. He wasn’t lauded in Russia as a glamorous spy and hero, and didn’t even bother to learn the language.

We see the dingy apartment building in which he existed quietly, turning to drink, and finding Russian society was even less tolerant of his homosexuality than Britain.

He died at 52. It was a sad end to a sad story.