A Spy Among Friends

This account of the Cambridge spies, focusing on Kim Philby, the infamous Third Man, is fascinating and highly readable.

Spy stories, both fictional and nonfictional, interest me, and I suppose many others, because they deal with treachery, deceit and betrayal.  And I believe this interest is intensified in people who in childhood have experienced or been exposed to powerful family secrets or deceptions.   A Perfect Spy, reputed to be LeCarrè's most autobiographical novel, deals explicitly with this topic.

So it's no surprise that many people are riveted by the story of Kim Philby's decades-long career as both a highly placed leader in Britain's MI6 and a double agent who passed thousands of secrets to the Soviets and cost the lives of hundreds of British agents.  This betrayal was especially shocking because of the close-knit and completely trusting relationships among the British upper classes who filled many of the MI6 positions.  Vetting often consisted simply of confirmation that the candidate came from "good people".  Philby survived so long as a double-agent not simply because he was a consummate actor, but also because he was so fully a member of the public school educated gentry. His friends and colleagues considered it to be simply impossible that "one of them" could be a traitor and they closed ranks to protect and defend him.  (This superior attitude and disregard of incriminating evidence infuriated members of the more working-class MI5 section, charged with investigating Philby).

MacIntyre's account of Philby's recruitment, advancement, betrayals, and eventual undoing is fascinating.  But what drove Philby to this extraordinary duplicity remains essentially unknown. After he was revealed as a double-agent and fled to Russia, his third wife Eleanor asked him if he had to choose between the Party and his family, which he would choose, and he unhesitatingly replied, "The Party, of course".  Eventually, he came to acknowledge the evils of Communism as practiced in Russia, but rationalized them as the errors of men, rather than flaws in the system.  Surprisingly, then, he had minimal interest in or knowledge of the theory of communism.  Such a life, which appears to derive satisfaction from betrayal alone rather than betrayal in the service of a cause, suggests, to this armchair psychiatrist, that Philby was almost certainly driven by powerful forces from his childhood rather than an intellectual conviction.  MacIntyre depicts Philby's father, a distinguished Arabist who was an advisor to King Ibn Saud, as an irascible iconoclast and an extremely demanding yet absent father.  After his father's sudden death, Philby, a heavy drinker at the best of times, immediately plunged into despondency and alcoholic stupor.   The origins of Philby's extraordinary duplicity must be more complex, intense and unusual than this, and it would be fascinating to understand the development of his personality but, of course, the master of keeping secrets from his friends offered no grist for speculation.