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Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 1912-11 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union.
In 1963, he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring that had divulged British secrets to the Soviets during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been the most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets.
Born in British India, Philby was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1934. After leaving Cambridge, Philby worked as a journalist, covering the Spanish Civil War and the Battle of France.
In 1940, he began working for the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6). By the end of the Second World War he had become a high-ranking member.
In 1949, Philby was appointed first secretary to the British Embassy in Washington and served as chief British liaison with American intelligence agencies. During his career as an intelligence officer, he passed large amounts of intelligence to the Soviet Union, including the Albanian Subversion, a scheme to overthrow the pro-Soviet government of Communist Albania.
Philby was suspected of tipping off two other spies under suspicion of Soviet espionage, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, both of whom subsequently fled to Moscow in May 1951. Under suspicion himself, Philby resigned from MI6 in July 1951 but was publicly exonerated by then-Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan in 1955. He resumed his career as both a journalist and a spy for MI6 in Beirut, but was forced to defect to Moscow after finally being unmasked as a Soviet agent in 1963. Philby lived in Moscow until his death in 1988.
Kim Philby was born in Ambala, Punjab, British India, to author and explorer St John Philby and his wife, Dora Johnston. A member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) at the time of Philby's birth, St John later became a civil servant in Mesopotamia and advisor to King Ibn Sa'ud of Saudi Arabia.
Nicknamed Kim after the boy-spy in Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim, Philby attended Aldro preparatory school, an all-boys school located in Shackleford, Surrey.
While working to aid German refugees in Vienna, Philby met Litzi Friedmann (born Alice Kohlmann), a young Austrian communist of Hungarian Jewish origins. Philby admired the strength of her political convictions.
It is possible that it was a Viennese-born friend of Friedmann's in London, Edith Tudor Hart–herself, at this time, a Soviet agent-who first approached Philby about the possibility of working for Soviet intelligence.
In early 1934 Arnold Deutsch, another Soviet agent, was sent to University College London under the cover of a research appointment, but in reality had been assigned to recruit the brightest students from Britain's top universities.
More information: History Hit
I am a private person and a political person.
Of course, if there is a conflict,
the political person comes first.
Kim Philby
If you enjoy reading fact based espionage thrillers, of which there are only a handful of decent ones, do try reading Bill Fairclough’s Beyond Enkription. It is an enthralling unadulterated fact based autobiographical spy thriller and a super read as long as you don’t expect John le Carré’s delicate diction, sophisticated syntax and placid plots.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting is that this book is so different to any other espionage thrillers fact or fiction that I have ever read. It is extraordinarily memorable and unsurprisingly apparently mandatory reading in some countries’ intelligence agencies’ induction programs. Why?
Maybe because the book has been heralded by those who should know as “being up there with My Silent War by Kim Philby and No Other Choice by George Blake”; maybe because Bill Fairclough (the author) deviously dissects unusual topics, for example, by using real situations relating to how much agents are kept in the dark by their spy-masters and (surprisingly) vice versa; and/or maybe because he has survived literally dozens of death defying experiences including 20 plus attempted murders.
The action in Beyond Enkription is set in 1974 about a real maverick British accountant who worked in Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC) in London, Nassau, Miami and Port au Prince. Initially in 1974 he unwittingly worked for MI5 and MI6 based in London infiltrating an organised crime gang. Later he worked knowingly for the CIA in the Americas. In subsequent books yet to be published (when employed by Citicorp, Barclays, Reuters and others) he continued to work for several intelligence agencies. Fairclough has been justifiably likened to a posh version of Harry Palmer aka Michael Caine in the films based on Len Deighton’s spy novels.
Beyond Enkription is a must read for espionage cognoscenti. Whatever you do, you must read some of the latest news articles (since August 2021) in TheBurlingtonFiles website before taking the plunge and getting stuck into Beyond Enkription. You’ll soon be immersed in a whole new world which you won’t want to exit. Intriguingly, the articles were released seven or more years after the book was published. TheBurlingtonFiles website itself is well worth a visit and don’t miss the articles about FaireSansDire. The website is a bit like a virtual espionage museum and refreshingly advert free.
Returning to the intense and electrifying thriller Beyond Enkription, it has had mainly five star reviews so don’t be put off by Chapter 1 if you are squeamish. You can always skip through the squeamish bits and just get the gist of what is going on in the first chapter. Mind you, infiltrating international state sponsored people and body part smuggling mobs isn’t a job for the squeamish! Thereafter don’t skip any of the text or you’ll lose the plots. The book is ever increasingly cerebral albeit pacy and action packed. Indeed, the twists and turns in the interwoven plots kept me guessing beyond the epilogue even on my second reading.
The characters were wholesome, well-developed and beguiling to the extent that you’ll probably end up loving those you hated ab initio, particularly Sara Burlington. The attention to detail added extra layers of authenticity to the narrative and above all else you can’t escape the realism. Unlike reading most spy thrillers, you will soon realise it actually happened but don’t trust a soul.