Editing Robert Conquest (section)

===War years===
In Lisbon on an American passport at the outbreak of the [[World War II|Second World War]], Conquest returned to England.<ref name=Quadrant>{{cite web|title=Vale Robert Conquest, Historian and Poet|url=http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2015/08/vale-robert-conquest/|website=Quadrant|date=4 August 2015 |publisher=quadrant.org.au|accessdate=15 October 2015}}</ref> As the Communist Party of Great Britain denounced the war in 1939 as imperialist and capitalist, Conquest broke with it and was commissioned into the [[Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry]] on 20 April 1940, serving with the regiment until 1946.<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=34837 |date=23 April 1940 |page=2459 |supp=y}}</ref><ref name="Brown"/>

In 1943 he was posted to the [[School of Slavonic and East European Studies]] (later part of [[University College London]]) to study Bulgarian.<ref name=Telegraphobit/> The following year he was posted to [[Bulgaria]] as a [[liaison officer]] to the Bulgarian forces fighting under Soviet command, attached to the Third Ukrainian Front, then to the [[Allied Control Commission]]. At the end of the war, he joined the [[Foreign Office]], returning to the British Legation in [[Sofia]] where he remained as the press officer.<ref name=NYTobit/> In 1948 he left Bulgaria when he was recalled to London under a minor diplomatic cloud after he had helped smuggle two Bulgarians out of the country.<ref name=Telegraphobit/>