A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

by Ben Macintyre

clothes, and married women of their own

of immovable Victorian principles and ferocious prejudices.

ideological conflict: Hitler had taken power in 1933; the Spanish Civil War would erupt in the summer of 1936; extreme right and extreme left fought it out in university rooms and on the streets. But the fervid political atmosphere simply passed Elliott by. He was far too busy having fun. He seldom opened a book and emerged after three years with many friends and a third-class degree, a result he considered ‘a triumph over the examiners’. Nicholas Elliott left Cambridge with every social and educational advantage, and absolutely no idea what he wanted to do. But beneath a complacent and conventional exterior, and the ‘languid, upper-class manner’ lay a more complex personality, an adventurer with a streak of subversion. Claude Elliott’s Victorian rigidity had instilled in his son a deep aversion to rules. ‘I could never be a good soldier because I am insufficiently amenable to discipline,’ he reflected. When told to do something, he tended to ‘obey not the order which he had actually been given by a superior, but rather the order which that superior would have given if he had known what he was talking about’. He was tough – the brutality of Durnford had seen to that – but also sensitive, bruised by a lonely childhood.

Mesopotamia. He could not hide his disgust.

cancel the trip.’ Elliott swiftly reported

earlier, Stevens and Best had secretly made contact with a group of disaffected German officers plotting to oust Hitler in a military

ambition’ of Stevens, who had

secrecy. The void in Elliott’s life left by the death of Basil Fisher was filled by Philby. ‘He had an ability to inspire loyalty and affection,’ wrote Elliott. ‘He was one of those people who were instinctively liked but more rarely understood. For his friends he sought out the unconventional

fashion, called “county”,’ wrote Solomon.

could pass for an Indian. The name stuck

officer put it, ‘a decent chap’.

Lagos playing bridge with an SOE officer ‘who was

Greene’s personal use: in fact, the future novelist had set up a ‘roving brothel’ to entice secrets

whose only crime was to oppose the political

Abwehr officers, had little time for the brutality and vulgarity of Nazism. He looked more like

Chicago banker with a taste for trouble and

intelligence exchanges regarding the USSR’. But many of the defectors’ revelations, notably those relating to the anti-communist resistance organisation in Germany, were considered far too sensitive to be shared with the Soviet Union. More than a year later, Moscow was still complaining that it had not seen a full account of Vermehren’s debriefing. The news of Vermehren’s defection was carefully leaked. The Associated Press reported: ‘The twenty-four-year-old attaché and his wife declared that they had deserted the Germans because they were disgusted with Nazi brutality. He is said to possess detailed information of the greatest value.’ MI5 was annoyed to discover that the defection was being exclusively handled by MI6. ‘If an enemy alien is to be brought here solely for the purposes of his being pumped for information he should, I think, be under our control,’ wrote Guy Liddell. This was pure professional jealousy. In securing Vermehren’s defection, MI6 trumpeted that Elliott had struck an ‘outstanding blow’ against the enemy: the information he brought was useful enough in terms of intelligence, but the symbolic impact of his defection on Germany was quite shattering. Hitler is said to have ‘exploded’ when told of Vermehren’s defection. For some time, he had suspected (rightly) that Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and

MI5’s fingerprints were all over this decision; that way, if the Security Service should ever investigate how he had

confidence. Philby moved easily among the leaders of this new world order, a warm and reassuring presence among the Cold Warriors. Philby was not a greedy man,

its broad outlines have been described by witnesses. The

A graduate of the Leningrad Naval Academy, Yuri

restaurant on Piccadilly. Burgess had

the Caribbean or Mexico. Makayev in

respects, but were fundamentally dissimilar in outlook. MI5 tended to recruit former police officers and soldiers, men who sometimes

years. He knew Guy Burgess well. Anthony Blunt was one of his closest chums. Liddell’s diary betrays a man struggling with the realisation that some, and perhaps all, of his closest friends were spies. ‘I dined with Anthony Blunt,’ he wrote. ‘I feel certain that Blunt was never a conscious collaborator with Burgess in any activities that he may have

020, the secret interrogation centre

floundered, one

think.’ Both Philbys had certainly done that. Kim later wrote that had

peril he was in. The journalist Richard

Seale and McConville, Philby, p.

‘sudden conversion’: Philby, My Silent War, p. xxx.

‘warned the Centre’: Andrew, Defence of the Realm, p. 346. ‘without reserve’: ibid. ‘Stanley informed me’: Borovik, The Philby Files, p. 242. ‘Stanley is an exceptionally valuable’: ibid., p. 244. ‘conscientious work for over’: ibid., p. 249. ‘I looked around’: Trevor-Roper, The Philby Affair, p. 42. Chapter 8: Rising Stars ‘I believed we were’: Holzman, James Jesus Angleton, p. 3. ‘The

Spy, p. 133. ‘The interrogation of Philby’: Liddell, Diaries, TNA KV 4/473.

‘I find myself unable’: Andrew, Defence of the Realm, p. 427.

Elliott, Umbrella, p. 188.

‘Blunt was in the clear’: Wright, Spycatcher, p.

Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details