At one stage, in the programme for his play Single Spies, the writer Alan Bennett printed a claim that my dad John had turned up late to his own fathers funeral, straight from the airport, and stood swaying behind a gravestone clutching bags of booze. 1962George Blake is caught. He betrayed his country yes, perhaps he did, Greene continues, but who among us has not committed treason to something or someone more important than a country? Being one of North Korea's elite, for the nation he was the highest profile defection since No Kum-sok (above . n ADAPTED from A Spy Named Orphan by Roland Philipps, to be published by The Bodley Head on April 26 at 20. Given all that Melinda had gone through, the pity she had had to accept and the dissembling she had had to practise, that first meeting overseen by Soviet officials was a strained affair. "There was one funny incident," she remembered. Exposure showed me along with William Boyds Restless how you can write a novel that is ostensibly a spy story but is really about the people, and the families, at the heart of a great betrayal. He had friends, a wife; he indulged himself in a culture he loved the concerts, the ballet, the galleries; he travelled to Cuba, East Berlin, around the Soviet Union, and spent weekends at his beloved dacha. He was tall and fair; she was slight with curly, dark hair. As for the drinking, Kim never needed an excuse to crack open a bottle; he was a drinker in good times and in bad. To order A Spy Among Friends or Kim Philby, each at 14.99 with free UK p&p, call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk. But above all, the problem was that Kims intelligence was too good, and to their detriment intelligence services are geared to believe that the better information is, the more it should be questioned. He and Pukhova married in 1971, when he was 59 and she was 38. . I am going to England in July for a Filby reunion at the town Filby. The two men said very little and the interview lasted barely five minutes. As previously noted, this has been taken as a sign along with his heavy drinking that in the end, Kim was left a broken man, disillusioned and dejected, having arrived in Moscow expecting to be given important assignments and a high-ranking role in the KGB, only to be left with very little to do, and plied with booze to keep him compliant. Rebuilding it meant forging a unique friendship with the very woman he left her for. Indeed, when the leading Russian writer Genrikh Borovik was given access to Kims unseen KGB file in 1994 six years after his death the extent to which the Russians mistrusted him became clear. Harold Adrian Russell " Kim " Philby ORB, OL ODN (1 January 1912 - 11 May 1988) [1] was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. Which author do you most admire?I dont have favourites, but I love Helen Dunmore. It seemed a fitting finale for such a notable spy. His father had a distinguished past as an explorer and fixer for the region's movers and shakers, and any intelligence Kim could pick up through his father's outstanding contacts would be useful to the bosses in . They gave a lot of parties. Donald Maclean, although arrogant and someone who liked a drink too, was regarded as more convivial. Maclean bequeathed Blake his library of books, including Trollope, Macaulay's History of England, Morley's Life of Gladstone, and the Macmillan and Eden memoirs. Getty Images In the USSR, Philby essentially became an honorary pensioner: he passed on to Soviet intelligence everything he. The basic facts, after all, are well-documented. It's Mr (coffee) Bean! Then she drove off with the children. This is not the first time Charlotte Philby has written in defense of her grandfathers actions. Laying flowers at my grandfather's grave. Spy Among Friends : Philby and the Great Betrayal, Paperback by MacIntyre, Ben, ISBN 1408851784, ISBN-13 9781408851784, Brand New, Free shipping in the US<br><br> kims flat is several floors up, in an apartment block not far from Pushkin Square, marked out from the rest by a tiny balcony. The whole plan is being masterminded by Kim Philby in Moscow. Having secured Kims first meeting with the Western press since his arrival in Moscow, Sayle says he finds him a courteous man [who] smiles a great deal, and his well-cut grey hair and ruddy complexion suggests vitality and enjoyment of life. Standing on the balcony, you can see the same school playground, where children in heavy ski jackets are involved in a timeless game launching themselves from the top of a flight of concrete stairs to the ground below, cushioned with thick blankets of snow. Some could never quite come to terms that he was a traitor. He barely embraced his wife. But I dont think my grandfather ever questioned a single decision he made. Philby was recruited, it reveals, because it was mistakenly believed that his father, St John, was a British intelligence officer. However, Pukhova said the fear that she would leave had helped her husband temper his intake in later years. At the sight of our car, the men leap from their posts, saluting and buzzing the electric gates; one jumps into the front seat and calls out instructions as we roll off again. Given a heros burial in Moscows Kuntsevo Cemetery. 1949Made SIS representative in Washington. She also helped find homes for Kindertransport children and during the Second World War helped set up the British Restaurants for people who had been bombed in the Blitz. On the eve of his 99th birthday, I spent, At Kim's flat with his partner, Rufina. Required to take new names and identities, Maclean chose to be Mark Petrovich Frazer (after the Cambridge anthropologist Sir James Frazer of Golden Bough fame, a 12-volume study of mythology and religion). The Soviet authorities buried him with honors when he died in 1988. We searched every corner until Kim suddenly struck himself on the head with his hand, went to a cupboard and brought back the boot. Takes charge of British intelligence in Spain and Portugal. 1925Attends Westminster School in London. But out of a smaller window, in front of the door, the view of Moscow is interrupted by a throbbing neon Samsung advert. Joins Cambridge University Socialist Society. I think Ive spent so long having other people project their versions of my grandfather and my family on to me that writing about it is a way of trying to reclaim the story. Life in Moscow. They met each other socially but soon fell out. And at every turn, the story is slightly different, the answer ever less clear: the more his character has come under scrutiny, the more elusive he has become. Kim Philby drank while Guy Burgess, who was gay, missed his friends in London, including Anthony Blunt whose spying activities, though known to the government, were kept under wraps until they. Today, as Kims widow greets me at the door, offering me a pair of woollen slippers, the atmosphere is quiet and calm. He got himself a job teaching English in a school. Charlotte Philby, daughter of John Philby, H.A.R. She was incredibly brave, incredibly loyal; she was completely faithful to the things she loved and believed in, and she had a firm belief that she had to do the right thing. Kim Philby met his first wife the Jewess, Litzi Friedman in Vienna, and it was Friedman, a dyed-in-the-wool communist, who convinced Philby to become a fellow KGB . Philby had other less damaging routines: a cup of Russian tea at 7am and English tea with milk at 5pm, drunk from a fine porcelain cup. But we visited Kim in Moscow and those holidays form some of my earliest memories, so it wasnt like he was a secret. Kim was appointed head of a newly formed anti-Soviet section, and as the top Secret Intelligence Service representative, worked for several years in liaison with the CIA and FBI all along handing information straight back into the hands of the Russians. His eldest son was my father, John who was himself a 19-year-old art student in 1963 when he first learnt of Kims espionage; stepping off a ferry on the Isle of Wight, he was met by a billboard stating that Kim was a wanted man. It was, in fact, those journeys to Kims flat which form some of my strongest early memories: flying down the third lane of the motorway in an unmarked car. While I was researching this article, Bennett also the author of An Englishman Abroad, in which he imagines Guy Burgesss final years in Moscow: lonely, pathetic and wholly unfulfilled responded to a shorter opinion piece I wrote for this paper last July in which I defended my grandfathers decision not to apologise publicly for his actions. Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 1912 - 11 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer who worked as a spy for the Soviet Union, before defecting in 1963. To order a copy for 15, visit mailshop.co.uk/ books or call 0844 571 0640. In her article, published yesterday in British daily The Independent, she describes Kim Philby as a proud man, and one who chose to publicly stand by his actions. Perhaps he hadnt always been right. If we were really lucky, sometimes and this was still the 1980s thered be a distant ringing, and from a compartment near the gear stick, our escort would pull out a telephone attached to a spiral cord, which hed talk into in a low voice, repeating the same two words, horosho and da, again and again before hanging up. And sadness. Born in India in 1912, Philby became a communist sympathiser after leaving Cambridge and began working as a KGB informer in the mid 1930s in London. When Melinda and the children joined him, they moved into a small apartment and the children were put into the local Soviet schools. Your email address will not be published. 1912Harold Adrian Russell Kim Philby is born on 1 January in Amballa, India, the son of Dora and St John. He never promised to give up, but once, completely unexpectedly, he suddenly said, 'I'm afraid I'm going to lose you, I'm not going to drink any more.' "His alcoholism was suicide," she told the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. H. A. R. (Kim) Philby, the double agent whose betrayal of his country and his social class indelibly marked British politics, has died in Moscow, officials in London said yesterday. I love those images of him as a real person; for me, thats where the clues as to who he really was can be found. Born in 1946, Dudley 'Tommy' Philby is the third of Kim's five children with his second of four wives, Aileen Furse Philby. "It was winter and we were going out for a walk and I found one of my boots had disappeared. When the news broke in Britain that she, too, had defected, the Press rounded on Melinda, turning the pathetic and lonely figure theyd previously portrayed her as into a scheming deceiver. The Second Woman: Best new fiction, Mail on Sunday. John Philby, who has died aged 65, was the eldest son of the Russian spy Kim Philby, unmasked in 1963 as a double agent and the notorious Third Man in the Cambridge spy ring of the 1930s. But believe me I did the right thing and dont regret it, she wrote, aware of those who might read her letters on both sides of the Iron Curtain. 4.1 out of 5 stars. Primary Sources. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group. In 1963, having been exposed in Britain as the notorious Third Man in the Cambridge Spy Ring, Kim fled to Moscow, never again to set foot from behind the Iron Curtain. Philby's work led to the deaths of dozens of British agents, making him a reviled traitor once he was exposed in Britain. The comments below have not been moderated. Five minutes later, Im watching the shadow of a tall, leafless tree falling against the snow on the path in front of my grandfathers tombstone, wondering who it was whod been here in the past few hours and placed a bunch of brightly coloured flowers at the foot of his grave. Maclean and Burgess escape to Russia. "Kim said to me, 'I came here totally fully of information, I wanted to give everything I had but no one was interested," explained Pukhova. The little blue pill really is magic! Britain declares that Philby is the Third Man. Cambridge-educated Nicholas Elliott and Kim Philby became close friends in 1940, when they were both working in separate departments of the British Intelligence . He liked the fact that you could only buy seasonal goods in Moscow, but asked family members to bring out the non-perishables he loved and couldnt get there marmalade, Marmite and Worcestershire sauce. But so it was. Now, in an attempt to impose some order on my own understanding of my grandfather, to clarify the kaleidoscopic image of him which has formed in my mind, I have returned for the first time as an adult to the country where, in political exile, he lived out the last 25 years of his life. In our final extract, she secretly joins him behind the Iron Curtain. And he kept his word to the end." 1958Marries Eleanor Brewer, an American. Although she would be left pitied, even censured, and alone in a country in which she had spent barely one-tenth of her life, it might be better that he should be free to live a new life in Moscow than spend a decade behind bars. Kim Philbys granddaughter describes memories of her grandfather. Prince Harry drops 45 points and Meghan Markle 36 points in just over a month in US public opinion poll Sadiq Khan faces furious backlash over plans for biggest transport and council tax rises in a decade as James Martin warns This Morning viewers why they should NEVER store their eggs in the fridge. Melinda, it turned out, had driven to Lausanne, where tickets were waiting and luggage had been left in a station locker. [1] Philby began his work for the Soviet Union as a spy in 1934. But I had to find the right way to approach it. 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