A Spy Among Friends Quotes

“Eccentricity is one of those English traits that look like frailty but mask a concealed strength; individuality disguised as oddity.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“The fatal conceit of most spies is to believe they are loved, in a relationship between equals, and not merely manipulated.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“The word most consistently used to describe Kim Philby was "charm", that intoxicating, beguiling and occasionally lethal English quality.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Sam Brewer enjoyed discussing Middle Eastern politics with Philby; Philby enjoyed sleeping with his wife.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“In a brilliant lecture written in 1944, C. S. Lewis described the fatal British obsession with the ‘inner ring’, the belief that somewhere, just beyond reach, is an exclusive group holding real power and influence, which a certain sort of Englishman constantly aspires to find and join.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Here, then, was a truly bizarre situation: Philby was telling Moscow the truth, but was disbelieved, and allowed to go on thinking he was believed; he was deceiving the British in order to aid the Soviets, who suspected a deception, and were in turn deceiving him.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Secrets are the currency of intelligence work, and among professional spies a little calculated indiscretion raises the exchange rate.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Philby now went in for the kill. Elliott had tipped him off that he would be cleared by Macmillan, but mere exoneration was not enough: he needed Lipton to retract his allegations, publicly, humiliatingly, and quickly. After a telephone consultation with Elliott, he instructed his mother to inform all callers that he would be holding a press conference in Dora’s Drayton Gardens flat the next morning. When Philby opened the door a few minutes before 11:00 a.m. on November 8, he was greeted with gratifying proof of his new celebrity. The stairwell was packed with journalists from the world’s press. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “Do come in.” Philby had prepared carefully. Freshly shaved and neatly barbered, he wore a well-cut pinstriped suit, a sober and authoritative tie, and his most charming smile. The journalists trooped into his mother’s sitting room, where they packed themselves around the walls. Camera flashes popped. In a conspicuous (and calculated) act of old-world gallantry, Philby asked a journalist sitting in an armchair if he would mind giving up his seat to a lady journalist forced to stand in the doorway. The man leaped to his feet. The television cameras rolled. What followed was a dramatic tour de force, a display of cool public dishonesty that few politicians or lawyers could match. There was no trace of a stammer, no hint of nerves or embarrassment. Philby looked the world in the eye with a steady gaze and lied his head off. Footage of Philby’s famous press conference is still used as a training tool by MI6, a master class in mendacity.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“increased legibility of his handwriting only serves to reveal the inadequacy of his ability to spell,”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“wore the same well-tailored clothes, and married women of their own tribe. But all that time, Philby had one secret he never shared: he was covertly working for Moscow, taking everything he was told by Elliott and passing it on to his Soviet spymasters. Elliott has come to Beirut to extract a confession. He has wired up the apartment and set watchers on the doors and street. He wants to know how many have died through Philby’s betrayal of their friendship. He wants to know when he became a fool.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Philby would later frame his decision as one of ideological purity, consistent with the ‘total commitment to the Soviet Union’ he had made at the age of twenty-one. He did what he did, in his own estimation, out of pure political conviction, the guiding principle of his life. He looked with disdain on others who had seen the horrors of Stalinism and abandoned ship. ‘I stayed the course,’ he wrote, ‘in the confident faith that the principles of the Revolution would outlive the aberration of individuals.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“He was a man who regarded his opinions, however briefly adopted, as revealed truth: he never backed down, or listened, or compromised. He was equally swift to give and take offense and ferociously critical of everyone except himself.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Elliott and Philby existed within the inner circle of Britain’s ruling class, where mutual trust was so absolute and unquestioned that there was no need for elaborate security precautions. They were all part of the same family.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Has the Prime Minister made up his mind to cover up at all costs the dubious third man activities of Mr Harold Philby who was first secretary at the Washington embassy a little time ago, and is he determined to stifle all discussions on the very great matters which were evaded in the White Paper, which is an insult to the intelligence of the country?”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“In a plot that smacks of James Bond (and has all the hallmarks of an Elliott ruse), a Dutch agent named Peter Tazelaar was put ashore near the seafront casino at Scheveningen, wearing full evening dress and covered with a rubber suit to keep him dry. Once ashore, Tazelaar peeled off his outer suit and began to “mingle with the crowd on the front” in his dinner jacket, which had been sprinkled with brandy to reinforce the “party-goer’s image.” Formally dressed and alcoholically perfumed, Tazelaar successfully made it past the German guards and picked up a radio previously dropped by parachute. The echo of 007 may not be coincidental: among the young blades of British intelligence at this time was a young officer in naval intelligence named Ian Fleming, the future author of the James Bond books. Ian Fleming and Nicholas Elliott had both experienced the trauma of being educated at Durnford School; they became close friends.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“The major players in the Philby story were invariably wise after the event. Spies, even more than most people, invent the past to cover up mistakes. The Philby case has probably attracted more retrospective conspiracy theories than any other in the history of espionage: Dick White of MI6 was running a ruse to trap him; Nicholas Elliott was secretly jousting with him; James Angleton suspected him and set Miles Copeland to spy on him; Philby’s fellow journalists (another tribe adept at misremembering the past) later claimed that they had always seen something fishy in his behavior. Even Eleanor, his wife, would later look back and claim to have discovered clues to his real nature. No one likes to admit they have been utterly conned. The truth was simpler, as it almost always is: Philby was spying on everyone, and no one was spying on him, because he fooled them all.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“The Beirut beat was a demanding one. Middle Eastern politics were as complex and volatile in 1956 as they are today. But as Philby knew from his years as a correspondent in civil-war Spain, there is no better cover job for a spy than that of journalist, a profession that enables the asking of direct, unsubtle, and impertinent questions about the most sensitive subjects without arousing suspicion.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“noted Philby’s unique sartorial swagger: “The old Secret Service professionals were given to spats and monocles long after they passed out of fashion,” but the new intake of officers could be seen “slouching about in sweaters and gray flannel trousers, drinking in bars and cafés and low dives … boasting of their underworld acquaintances and liaisons. Philby may be taken as a prototype and was indeed, in the eyes of many of them, a model to be copied.” Elliott began to dress like Philby. He even bought the same expensive umbrella from James Smith & Sons of Oxford Street, an umbrella that befitted an establishment man of the world, but one with panache.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Soviet intelligence was playing a long game, laying down seed corn that could be harvested many years hence or left dormant forever. It was a simple, brilliant, durable strategy of the sort that only a state committed to permanent world revolution could have initiated. It would prove staggeringly successful.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“And so began a bizarre situation in which Philby told Moscow the truth and was disbelieved because the truth contradicted Moscow’s expectations.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“He preferred women to men, and horses to both.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Before becoming headmaster of Eton, Claude Elliott had taught history at Cambridge University, despite an ingrained distrust of academics and an aversion to intellectual conversation. But the long university vacations gave him plenty of time for mountain climbing.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Operation Claret proceeded with the sort of smoothness that suggested no one in authority was paying adequate attention.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“The Elliott-Ustinov partnership proved extraordinarily effective but rather fattening: a fine chef, Klop tended to turn up unexpectedly, carrying rognons de veau à la liégeoise inside a leather top-hat case.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Richard Brooman-White, Elliott’s chum who had eased Philby into Section V, came to stay in 1946 and was very nearly immolated when a waitress in Elliott’s favorite restaurant attempted to flambé an omelet at the table by pouring brandy onto a heated pan, causing a violent explosion that set fire to the hair of a Swedish diner. Elliott extinguished her with three glasses of white wine. Philby made a point of stopping off in Switzerland during his”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Far from being repelled by the duplicity around him, Elliott felt ever more drawn to the game of skulduggery and double cross. The Venlo debacle had been “as disastrous as it was shameful,” but he also found it fascinating, an object lesson in how highly intelligent people could be duped if persuaded to believe what they most wanted to believe. He was learning quickly.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“St John Philby was a notable scholar, linguist, and ornithologist, and he did achieve fame of a sort, but he might have found more lasting appreciation had he not been so profoundly irritating, willful, and arrogant. He was a man who regarded his opinions, however briefly adopted, as revealed truth: he never backed down, or listened, or compromised. He was equally swift to give and take offense and ferociously critical of everyone except himself.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“mendacity.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Eccentricity is one of those English traits that looks like frailty but masks a concealed strength; individuality disguised as oddity.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“class). In the minute gradations of social stratification that meant so much in Britain, MI5 was “below the salt,” a little common, and MI6 was gentlemanly, elitist, and old school tie. MI5 were hunters; MI6 were gatherers. Philby’s patronizing dismissal of Dick White as “nondescript” precisely reflected MI6’s attitude to its sister service: White, as his biographer puts it, was “pure trade,” whereas Philby was “establishment.” MI5 looked up at MI6 with resentment; MI6 looked down with a small but ill-hidden sneer. The looming battle over Philby was yet another skirmish in Britain’s never-ending, hard-fought, and entirely ludicrous class war.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal