Modin published his book,
Mes Camarades de Cambridge, in
France in 1994. The book identified
Baron Rothschild as an important member of the
Cambridge Spy Ring. For the British translation, the British publisher Headline Book Publishing, made some changes, first to the title, making it
My Five Cambridge Friends with the sub-heading: "For the first time, their KGB controller reveals the secrets of the world's most famous spy ring—Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt and Cairncross." Second, Headline changed lines on page 104, now saying that
John Cairncross was the Fifth Man: 'At the close of 1944, the name of John Cairncross, code-named the Carelian, was added to the four agents to whose cases I had been assigned. He was the "Fifth Man". Cairncross had at one time or another been in contact with the others, but he was hardly a member of the group.'
Alan Rusbridger, who agreed with Roland Perry's assessment that
Rothschild was the fifth man, also wrote in
The Guardian: "Yuri Modin ... says in the English edition of his recent book that Cairncross was "the fifth man." Modin says he never used the term, which is not contained in the French edition of his book.' In an interview after publication of the book, Yuri Modin denied ever having named Rothschild as "any kind of Soviet agent". "Because he was in MI5 they learned things from him. This doesn't make him the fifth man, and he wasn't". Modin's own book's title clarifies the name of all five of the Cambridge spy group:
My Five Cambridge Friends: Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross by Their KGB Controller. Yuri Modin died in 2007 in Moscow. ==References==