10 questions · History
Harold Adrian Russell Philby was born on New Year’s Day 1912 in Ambala, India. His father, the Arabist St John Philby, called him “Kim”, after the boy in Rudyard Kipling’s novel who grows up in India to become a spy for the British. At Cambridge he studied at Trinity College, became a communist and in 1934 let himself be recruited by Soviet intelligence. With Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross he formed the core of what was later called the Cambridge Five. To hide his convictions he posed as a sympathiser of the right and reported for The Times on the Spanish Civil War from Franco’s side; Franco even gave him a decoration. In 1940 he joined MI6, and in 1944 he took over, of all things, the section meant to fight Soviet espionage. From 1949 he was liaison officer to the CIA and the FBI in Washington, and Burgess lodged in his house. When Burgess and Maclean fled to Moscow in 1951, suspicion fell on a “third man” who had warned them. Philby had to leave the service, but in 1955 Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan told the House of Commons there was no evidence against him. He went to Beirut as a journalist. In January 1963, as the evidence became overwhelming, he vanished from there and resurfaced in Moscow. In 1968 his memoirs “My Silent War” appeared, with a foreword by his old colleague Graham Greene. Philby died in Moscow in 1988 and was buried with military honours.
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Rudyard Kipling
Kim is a boy in British India who is used as a spy in the “Great Game” against Russia.
💡 Did you know? Kipling’s Kim is an orphan who moves unnoticed among the local people: a fitting model for a spy.
India
His father St John Philby was an official in the colonial service there.
💡 Did you know? His father later became famous as an explorer of Arabia and adviser to the Saudi king.
Trinity College
There he became a communist; Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt were Trinity men too.
💡 Did you know? After graduating he went to Vienna and in 1934 helped people persecuted after the February uprising.
The Times
He wrote from Franco’s side; in 1937 he was the only one in his car to survive a shell hit.
💡 Did you know? Franco then personally decorated him, the perfect cover for a communist.
MI6
As head of Section IX he could keep Moscow informed of every operation against the Soviet Union.
💡 Did you know? For a time he was seen as a possible future chief of the whole service.
Guy Burgess
Philby had Burgess warn Maclean that investigators were closing in on him.
💡 Did you know? That Burgess fled as well was not planned, and it turned suspicion towards Philby.
Anthony Blunt
He confessed in secret in 1964 in return for immunity and kept his post.
💡 Did you know? Only in 1979 did Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher make his spying public; he was stripped of his knighthood.
Harold Macmillan
Macmillan declared there was no evidence that Philby was the “third man”.
💡 Did you know? Philby then held a press conference in his mother’s flat and played the innocent.
Beirut
He was working there as a correspondent for The Observer and The Economist.
💡 Did you know? He disappeared on the evening of a dinner party he never arrived at, probably leaving on a Soviet freighter.
1988
The KGB gave him a funeral with military honours at Kuntsevo Cemetery.
💡 Did you know? Two years after his death the Soviet Union issued a postage stamp with his portrait.
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