It is now 30 years since Whittaker Chambers named Alger Hiss as a fellow Communist conspirator before the House Un-American Activities Committee, setting in motion a train of events that sent Hiss to gaol for perjury, and launching one of the most enduring political controversies of the century.
Esmond Wright. Director of the Institute of us studies, and Professor of American History at London University, reviews the affair and its consequences in the light of Allen Wein stein's book Perjury: the Hiss-Chambers Case.