He was a man of considerable cultural background. Commenting on his sabotage of the operation to secretly send thousands of Albanian anti-communists into Albania to overthrow the communist government, which led to many being killed, Philby rebutted that he helped prevent another World War. He feared that she would dump him because he was just a boring official in the British diplomatic service so to make myself look better and more important, I told her the reason why I led such a life. [24], In 1940, on the recommendation of Burgess, Philby joined MI6's Section D, a secret organisation charged with investigating how enemies might be attacked through non-military means. "He once even said that it was the easiest way to bring life to an end. They had access to the special shops reserved for the Soviet elite, and were able to import canned goods and drinks from Denmark. He was recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1934. I discovered much later from a photograph in MI5 files that the name he went by was Arnold Deutsch. We retrace the steps of the vast desert's earliest western adventurers and uncover tales of rivalry, stealth and concern for the future of the Bedouin. [71] However, others maintain that he escaped through Syria, overland to Soviet Armenia and thence to Russia. [47], Burgess, who had been given a post as Second Secretary at the British Embassy, took up residence in the Philby family home and rapidly set about causing offence to all and sundry. But such treatment did not last and they were quickly dispatched to the closed city of Kuybyshev, 600 miles east of Moscow far away, they were told, from British assassination squads. Philby jnr admitted that when the news broke, he felt a sense of something approaching quiet approval. His friend Malcolm Muggeridge regarded Philby as ''a real-life James Bond''. Kim Philby, , . burial place . [39][5], The intervention of Philby in the affair and the subsequent capture of Volkov by the Soviets might have seriously compromised Philby's position. With the goal of potentially arranging Franco's assassination, Philby was instructed to report on vulnerable points in Franco's security and recommend ways to gain access to him and his staff. Lipton later withdrew his comments. Elliott confronted him, saying, "I once looked up to you, Kim. The situation in Washington was tense. He joined (1917) the British foreign service, was sent on a special mission to Arabia, and became the first European to visit the southern provinces of the Nejd. He would say we and our when speaking of the Soviet Union and defended his adopted countrys brutal crushing of the Hungarian Uprising in 1956 an event that disgusted many Left-wing supporters back in the UK. Barclay reported the complaint to London. The comments below have not been moderated, By
n ADAPTED from A Spy Named Orphan by Roland Philipps, to be published by The Bodley Head on April 26 at 20. A plaque in his honour was. Director Susan Johnson Writers Kara Holden (screenplay by) Caren Lissner (based on the novel by) Stars Bel Powley Nathan Lane Scott Keiji Takeda See production, box office & company info Watch on Netflix The son, too, embraced left-wing politics and joined the Young Socialists when he was 17, after he enrolled at the Hornsey School of Art to study painting and sculpture. [5], Kim Philby, memorandum in Security Service Archives (1963). However, when Elliott asked him to sign a written statement, he hesitated and requested a delay in the interrogation. I hope you've enough decency left to understand why. When visiting Paris after the war, he was shocked to discover that the address that he used for Mlle Dupont was that of the Soviet embassy. Born in British India, Philby was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was happy in Moscow and fulfilled by his work. In January 1963, having finally been unmasked as a Soviet agent, Philby defected to Moscow, where he lived until his death in 1988. In late 1944 Philby, on instructions from his Soviet handler, maneuvered through the system successfully to replace Cowgill as head of Section Nine. He and Pukhova married in 1971, when he was 59 and she was 38. No connection with Philby was made at the time, and Krivitsky was found shot in a Washington hotel room the following year. 'in Russian", "The Cambridge Spies' West Hampstead connection", "Kim Philby: new revelations about spy emerge in secret files", "Spies Philby's widow tells of an Englishman's life in exile", "Moscow square named after notorious British double agent Kim Philby", "A Cold War Mystery: Was the Soviet Mole Kim Philby a Double Agent or a Triple Agent? Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. [11][pageneeded], Philby provided Stalin with advance warning of Operation Barbarossa and of the Japanese intention to strike into southeast Asia instead of attacking the Soviet Union as Hitler had urged. '', Finding himself the son of the most reviled man in Britain, Philby jnr was nonetheless surprised to discover how like his father he was; he was the closest of his siblings to his father, and visited him in the Soviet Union on at least 12 occasions. Philby admired the strength of her political convictions and later recalled that at their first meeting: A frank and direct person, Litzi came out and asked me how much money I had. Upon her return to Istanbul in late 1948, she was badly burned in an incident with a charcoal stove and returned to Switzerland. Rate this book. [50] Burgess was sent back to England, where he met Maclean in his London club. Two years later, a Sunday Times correspondent was in Moscow and about to pack his bags after an unsuccessful attempt to interview the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, when, out of the blue, he was invited to a room in his hotel. But as the months turned into years and no word came from him, she sank into depression at the realisation that she was now bringing up their children alone. [11][pageneeded], A more serious incident occurred in August 1945, when Konstantin Volkov, an NKVD agent and vice-consul in Istanbul, requested political asylum in Britain for himself and his wife. [17], In London, Philby began a career as a journalist. [3] St John was a member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and later a civil servant in Mesopotamia, and advisor to King Ibn Sa'ud of Saudi Arabia. [90] Aileen suffered from psychiatric problems, which grew more severe during the period of poverty and suspicion following the flight of Burgess and Maclean. Philby was a 19-year-old art student when his father was exposed in 1963 as a traitor. Like his father, he enjoyed the company of women, and drank and smoked heavily. [63] From 1960, Philby's formerly marginal work as a journalist became more substantial and he frequently travelled throughout the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Yemen. But he also did it to impress her. ", Pukhova, now 78, said she was irritated by stories about Philby's drink problem, but admitted he wasn't always able to stick to his two-glass rule. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Kim Philby in Russia in 1968, five years after defecting. This is absolutely the best place for us. After I had been wounded and decorated by Franco himself, I became known as 'the English-decorated-by-Franco' and all sorts of doors opened to me. Born in Rotterdam, George was the son of Albert Behar, a Turkish-born Sephardic Jew, and his wife, Catherine (nee Beijderwellen), a Dutch Protestant. Harold Adrian Russell Philby, ; 1 1912, , 11 1988, ) . The Macleans lived well, housed in a smart building overlooking the river, in a splendid six-room flat which they gradually filled with bric--brac and furniture shipped from home. He is widely considered historys most successful double spy. In early May 1951, Burgess got three speeding tickets in a single daythen pleaded diplomatic immunity, causing an official complaint to be made to the British Ambassador. Theirs had always been a stormy marriage, punctuated by bad behaviour on both sides and terrible rows. [74] When the news broke, MI6 came under criticism for failing to anticipate and block Philby's defection, though Elliott was to claim he could not have prevented Philby's flight. Years after the war, Sir Hardy Amies, who had served as an intelligence officer during the war, recalled that Philby was in his mess and on being asked what the infamous spy was like, Hardy quipped, "He was always trying to get information out of memost significantly the name of my tailor". [37], In February 1934, Philby married Litzi Friedmann, an Austrian Jewish communist whom he had met in Vienna. To protect his family, still living in the USSR, Orlov said nothing about Philby, an agreement Stalin respected. While working in Section Five, Philby had become acquainted with James Jesus Angleton, a young American counter-intelligence officer working in liaison with SIS in London. Tagged with Cold War, defectors, double agents, Dudley Thomas Philby, H.A.R. Philby's award of the Order of the British Empire was cancelled and annulled in 1965. After Philby defected to the Soviet Union in 1963, Eleanor visited him in Moscow. children: Dudley Thomas Philby, Harry George Philby, John . Philby's work led to the deaths of dozens of British agents, making him a reviled traitor once he was exposed in Britain. Known as Kim to his friends, Philby secretly defected to the USSR from his home in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1963. In 1955, a botched investigation formally cleared him of spying for the Soviets but, shortly before being reinterviewed by British intelligence in 1963, Philby snr defected to Moscow. [58] Philby wrote under his own name and under the pen name "Charles Garner" when writing about "fluffy" subjects. In 1964 when he was 20, the young Philby was fined 15 and placed on probation for two years for stealing, with two friends, a radio, alcohol, cigarettes and cash valued in all at 75 from a sports pavilion at Greenwich. [27] His time at Section D, however, was short-lived; the "tiny, ineffective, and slightly comic" section[28] was soon absorbed by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the summer of 1940. J. Edgar Hoover complained that Burgess used British Embassy automobiles to avoid arrest when he cruised Washington in pursuit of homosexual encounters. [54][61] There, his journalism served as cover for renewed work for MI6. While working as a senior member of British intelligence, he spied on behalf of the Soviet NKVD and KGB from the early 1930s until his defection. And here he was struck by disappointment, brought to tears. "[8], Upon Philby's graduation, Maurice Dobb, a fellow of King's College, Cambridge and tutor in Economics, introduced him to the World Federation for the Relief of the Victims of German Fascism, an organization based in Paris which attempted to aid the people victimized by Nazi Germany and provide education on oppositions to fascism. He said, 'Why do old people live so badly here? [85], Philby found work in the early 1970s in the KGB's Active Measures Department churning out fabricated documents. 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