Between friends

A SPY AMONG FRIENDS
Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
Ben Macintyre
Bloomsbury; 332 pages; Rs 399

First, a quick memo for Kim Philby buffs: A Spy Among Friends would best be described as an "updated" biography, even though Ben Macintyre has had access to recently declassified material. Not that Mr Macintyre, with such gems as Agent Zigzag and Operation Mincemeat to his credit, lays claim to explosive revelations either. He points to the "voluminous literature" on Britain's most infamous Russian double agent who defected to Moscow in 1963 and remained, ironically, forever out in the cold till his death in 1988. But Mr Macintyre is a gifted narrative historian of the British spy establishment and in his hands the Philby story acquires a new fascination even for the jaded aficionado.

Of the famous Cambridge Ring - the others being Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross - Harold Adrian Russell Philby (born in Ambala and nicknamed Kim after the gamin mixed-race spy of Rudyard Kipling's creation) holds an enduring fascination.

How did the classic Honourable Schoolboy, (Westminster School and Trinity, Cambridge), unquestionably Old School Tie and All That, systematically betray his country to Stalin's Russia for almost three decades? How did he manage to escape detection, despite glaring evidence and sustained interrogation after the defection of his collaborators Maclean and Burgess in 1951? How was he rehabilitated and rehired by his old employers after several years before the ignominious denouement?

There was no shortage of friends, family and colleagues to offer explanations after the event but these are, as Mr Macintyre points out, fragmentary and sometimes self-serving. As long as the relevant files of the KGB, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and MI6 remain closed, no one will know the full story.

Philby's memoir, My Silent War, is a frustratingly opaque epistle, its wooden tone strongly suggesting that it was written under KGB instruction. In it, Philby wrote that he was never a double agent and only ever served one master. Was Philby trying to burnish his tawdry crime of treason? Or was he underlining his unwavering fidelity to his suspicious adoptive masters?

Mr Macintyre, wisely, does not attempt to unravel Philby's motives. Instead, he tries to build a portrait of the man within his milieu and through the friendships he developed and then ruthlessly betrayed. The book is "an attempt to describe a particular sort of friendship that played an important role in history… It is less about politics, ideology and accountability than personality, character, and a very British relationship…," Mr Macintyre writes.

Two friends in particular staunchly stood by him during Philby's darkest days and paid with their careers when he defected. One was Nicholas Elliott, fellow MI6 officer, son of Sir Claude Aurelius Elliott, OBE, headmaster of Eton, and Pillar of the Establishment. This was Philby's world too; his father, St John Philby, was a Lawrence of Arabia type of figure who was advisor to Saudi Arabia's first monarch, Ibn Saud. Elliott frequently picked up the pieces of Philby's volatile private life and shared valuable classified information that his good friend faithfully passed on to Moscow.

The other was James Jesus Angleton, who went on to hold a sensitive and powerful post in the CIA and probably unwittingly shared sensitive intelligence with Philby. A quarter Apache, Angleton was educated at Malvern College, another blue-blooded British public school, and later went to Yale before being recruited by the OSS, the CIA's wartime forerunner. Like many, he was seduced by Philby's charm and, keen to show himself more British than the British, became part of the Soviet spy's charmed circle.

These relationships were forged in the exclusionary, almost incestuous, British upper-class ruling establishment and accentuated in the nudge-and-wink espionage world where the nurseries were the playing fields of the public schools, and the hallowed portals of Oxford and Cambridge their recruitment grounds. It revolved around secret associations like the Apostles in Cambridge and all-male clubs like the Athenaeum . It was, also, slightly campy, since homosexuality was implicitly tolerated even though it was outlawed by statute at the time; if Blunt and Burgess could be openly gay within the confines of this world, well, they were part of the approved Old Boy's network.

This was also a time when it was fashionable for university students to genuflect at the altar of Communism. Most outgrew these pangs and there is nothing in Philby's subsequent life to suggest he hadn't - he was even decorated by General Franco during the Spanish Civil War at a time when he was spying on the Nationalists for the Russians. Serial affairs, marriages and a life of insanely hard drinking and carousing with his espionage colleagues bracketed a steadily rising career trajectory and an unwavering fidelity that survived Stalin's purges.

Kim, handsome, slightly shy and with a stammer, was marked for Great Things, so trusted that he was appointed liaison in Washington between the American and British services. With the battle lines hardening into the Cold War, that appointment put him in pole position to purvey secrets to the Russians, betrayals that sent thousands of young men and defectors to their deaths. If he survived undetected for as long as he did, it was because of the willful blindness of the establishment that nurtured him.

Mr Macintyre is a consummate storyteller and, in describing Philby's bizarre double life, ably recreates the Alice in Wonderland atmosphere of British espionage with its extraordinary cast of characters. The Afterword by John le Carre is the cherry on top, though the masterful spy novelist ends by reiterating his implacable aversion to Britain's most notorious traitor. As he had said before, when Philby asked to meet him in Moscow, he declined the honour.