Did your father, John, talk about his father?We never had a family meeting where he said: Right, Im going to explain to you who your grandfather was. That was not at all the kind of person he was. One of Kims old KGB comrades, whom Id been in contact with during the course of my research for this article, told me that a gang of five or six of Kims former colleagues still meet up every month and raise a toast in his honour. In 1951, Kim tipped off his fellow Cambridge spy Donald Maclean that Britain had caught wind of Macleans spying activities and a warrant had been issued for his arrest. Kim Philby drank while Guy Burgess, who was gay, missed his friends in London, including Anthony Blunt whose spying activities, though known to the government, were kept under wraps until they were exposed much later, in 1979. 1912Harold Adrian Russell Kim Philby is born on 1 January in Amballa, India, the son of Dora and St John. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); The Philby case has always fascinated me. Two years later he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Was he wrong to have continued on the Communist path once so many others had stepped off? Exposure showed me along with William Boyds Restless how you can write a novel that is ostensibly a spy story but is really about the people, and the families, at the heart of a great betrayal. Prince Harry drops 45 points and Meghan Markle 36 points in just over a month in US public opinion poll Sadiq Khan faces furious backlash over plans for biggest transport and council tax rises in a decade as James Martin warns This Morning viewers why they should NEVER store their eggs in the fridge. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Kim Philby in Russia in 1968, five years after defecting. He had got afraid that I would leave, and hidden the boot.". Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 1912 - 11 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer who worked as a spy for the Soviet Union, before defecting in 1963. During our stay, more mourners piled in, their cries and moans ricocheting off the walls. Two hours later, wind-battered and almost frozen solid, I finally arrive at the gates of the busy cemetery, where, hoping the guard might be able to point me in the right direction, I scrawl down my grandfathers name and the word Communist on an old tissue, and flash my driving licence. Later she became a journalist at the Independent. Philby's work led to the deaths of dozens of British agents, making him a reviled traitor once he was exposed in Britain. Seconds later, were hurtling at break-neck speed out of the cemetery, along the motorway, the driver making various calls en route, each consisting of just a few short sentences, before turning into a different burial ground up the road, manned with armed guards. In 1963, having been exposed in Britain as the notorious Third Man in the Cambridge Spy Ring, Kim fled to Moscow, never again to set foot from behind the Iron Curtain. A new TV series highlights the part played by the UK intelligence service's Nicholas Elliott in unmasking the 1960s Cambridge spy ring - events he recalled years later over lunch at his club Damian. Spy Among Friends : Philby and the Great Betrayal, Paperback by MacIntyre, Ben, ISBN 1408851784, ISBN-13 9781408851784, Brand New, Free shipping in the US<br><br> While working as a senior member of British intelligence, he spied on behalf of the Soviet KGB and NKVD from the early 1930s until 1963, when he defected to Moscow. He was able to order new books from Bowes & Bowes bookshop in Cambridge, who checked with MI5 whether they should be supplying him. As I walk towards it, the title of the Anthony Trollope novel jumps out at me: He Knew He Was Right. She flew to New York to see her daughter Annie, and it was there that several letters arrived from Philby. Charlotte Philby was only five years old when Kim died, but says she vividly remembers her grandfathers small modest flat several floors above ground level, in central Moscow, as well as the epic games of chess [the double spy played with her] dad over several glasses of whiskey when the family would visit him in Russia. To order a copy for 15, visit mailshop.co.uk/ books or call 0844 571 0640. 1934Marries Communist Jew Litzi Friedman. "I tried everything to save him; after all, he was killing himself. The view from one of the windows is notably different, too. that Philby, with his Communist views in Vienna and his Austrian Communist wife, had been recruited for SIS and had sailed through its vetting procedures?. The comments below have not been moderated. In the living room, the same furs hang above the sofa, alongside a pair of Afghan guns a gift from the KGB colleague whom I spoke to earlier. Heavy blankets of snow have settled across the plains of Moscow, and either side of our track, the ground is a brilliant white. Just beyond the crossroads which dominates Pushkin Square the spot where its said dissidents would meet, acknowledging each other by removing their hats is the former site of the Hotel Minsk (like much of the city, now under a lengthy reconstruction process), where Kim first met the journalist Murray Sayle in 1967. The two men said very little and the interview lasted barely five minutes. I love those images of him as a real person; for me, thats where the clues as to who he really was can be found. Today, standing at last at his final resting place, surrounded by ex-prime ministers and national heroes in an isolated cemetery on the outskirts of Moscow, with two perfect strangers looming behind me, Im once again reminded of quite how different he was. Kim Philby on holiday with his last wife Rufina Pukhova, 1970s. Kim was won over by the Communist cause while a student at Cambridge University, and upon graduation in 1933, travelled to Vienna to serve the international Communist organisation Comintern which was illegal in Austria with 100 in his pocket given to him by his father, St John, who was also a Cambridge graduate. Back in England, begins to cover up his past, joining the Anglo-German Fellowship, editing its pro-Hitler magazine. He liked the fact that you could only buy seasonal goods in Moscow, but asked family members to bring out the non-perishables he loved and couldnt get there marmalade, Marmite and Worcestershire sauce. In fact, he had arrived in Moscow days earlier, and can be seen on film standing just back from his fathers coffin. Lese Part of the Family gratis von Charlotte Philby Verfgbar als Hrbuch Jetzt 14 Tage gratis testen. It was seeing those photos as a six-year-old child which helped first alert me to the fact that there was something a bit different about grandpa Kimsky. Yesterday, in our serialisation of an electrifying biography based on newly released papers, we heard how he fled to Moscow just as he was about to be arrested leaving behind his supposedly innocent wife. She was a horsey product of the. Eleanor Kearns was born in Seattle in 1914. The first reports that Russia ranks 143rd in a list of the worlds freest economies, just one spot higher than countries with repressed economies like Vietnam, Ecuador, Belarus and Ukraine, while the next tells how oligarch Roman Abramovich, whose wealth is valued at 7 billion, has just snapped up 35 notable artworks to decorate his 560ft private yacht. They're at it again! Philby still dismissed from Foreign Service for his association with Burgess. But no matter; allowing myself plenty of time to get lost, Im soon heading towards the apartment where my grandfather lived out the final 25 years of his life under the watchful eye of Moscow and where his widow Rufa is currently preparing an enormous spread for our afternoon tea. To see through to the end what he started? Which author do you most admire?I dont have favourites, but I love Helen Dunmore. They gave a lot of parties. Laying flowers at my grandfather's grave. He sounded in good health and expressed the strong hope that she would join him in. Because hed told her from the very start. As Kim told my mother when she asked him if he felt any remorse, he believed he was a soldier, fighting a bloody war in the bloodiest century in history. Prince and Princess of Wales pay tribute to Auschwitz survivor Zigi Shipper, who dedicated his life to No rest for Anne! Our driver makes various calls en route, each consisting of just a few short sentences, before turning into a different burial ground up the road, manned with armed guards. And sadness. The colourful characters of spymaster Gertrude Bell (the first female officer in the British Army), the legendary "Lawrence of Arabia," and the astute traitor St. John Philby (father of the notorious KGB double-spy Kim Philby) are all so dynamic that their heroics are hard to believe, but nevertheless true and soundly researched by a perceptive . Britain declares that Philby is the Third Man. Perhaps. Melinda returned to Donald, but two years later moved to her own apartment. Pukhova said he was a "special" and principled man. He betrayed his country yes, perhaps he did, Greene continues, but who among us has not committed treason to something or someone more important than a country? . 1962George Blake is caught. He got himself a job teaching English in a school. That summer, friends thought her distracted. Required to take new names and identities, Maclean chose to be Mark Petrovich Frazer (after the Cambridge anthropologist Sir James Frazer of Golden Bough fame, a 12-volume study of mythology and religion). ", Pukhova, now 78, said she was irritated by stories about Philby's drink problem, but admitted he wasn't always able to stick to his two-glass rule. But I had to find the right way to approach it. The boys told a child they met on a beach that the photos he had taken could not be forwarded to them as we are going away and we dont know where we are going. Best thrillers for July 2021, The Times. Chicago-born Melinda, whom he married in France in 1940, knew all along that Donald was a spy. Elegant Princess of Wales is all smiles as she plays with children on visit to a nursery amid backlash over Thrifty Kate strikes again! His eldest son was my father, John who was himself a 19-year-old art student in 1963 when he first learnt of Kims espionage; stepping off a ferry on the Isle of Wight, he was met by a billboard stating that Kim was a wanted man. The two men in the front seat my guards of honour peer out in silence, squinting their eyes against the sunlight as it pours in through the canopy of trees above. Putting real historical characters into a novel is a minefield, especially those who existed within living memory. The spy who loved us: what Kim Philby's personal letters revealed about his mind The double-agent's granddaughter, Charlotte Philby, on the correspondence of a man who betrayed his country. But so it was. The Second Woman: Best new fiction, Mail on Sunday. Being one of North Korea's elite, for the nation he was the highest profile defection since No Kum-sok (above . Guarded night and day by KGB troops, and rigorously de-briefed to make sure they were not double agents, to all intents and purposes they were under house arrest. Image: Barney Beech, Kim's graveside, at Kuntsovo Cemetry. He never promised to give up, but once, completely unexpectedly, he suddenly said, 'I'm afraid I'm going to lose you, I'm not going to drink any more.' Some could never quite come to terms that he was a traitor. The central post office, where Kim would come every morning to pick up his mail and a stack of British and American newspapers, stands halfway up on the left. Just five years ago, my mum and I were refused service in a shop in Arizona on account of the name on our credit cards. He died in 1983 at the age of 69, recording beforehand that I do not at all regret having done what seemed and still seems to me my duty. Halfway there, they switched cars and drove to a small airport in the Soviet zone of Austria. Primary Sources. And here he was struck by disappointment, brought to tears. In our final extract, she secretly joins him behind the Iron Curtain. He was tall and fair; she was slight with curly, dark hair. 4.1 out of 5 stars. Macmillan was, of course, Prime Minister by 1962, when the Soviet double agent George Blake was caught, and Kim could no longer hide the truth. Its my third day in Russia. When Bennett was pulled up on the matter, he wrote my father a note explaining that he stood by what hed said as the information had come from a reliable source a BBC journalist. Philby died in the city in 1988, 25 years after defecting to the Soviet Union, where he was employed as an occasional consultant to the KGB helping to prepare spies for missions to the west. The only change I can note is a computer on his desk where an old type-writer once stood. [1] Philby began his work for the Soviet Union as a spy in 1934. Part of the Family and A Double Life are available now. Philby, though, began seeing Melinda on the side, confessing as much to his wife and saying that he was just trying to make [Melindas] life happier as she had been miserable for the last 15 years. But we visited Kim in Moscow and those holidays form some of my earliest memories, so it wasnt like he was a secret. According to a recent piece in the Daily Telegraph: For years Philby had sabotaged Allied missions behind the Iron Curtain and had calculatedly sent dozens of agents to their deaths. Most famously, he was almost certainly responsible for the tip-off which led to the deaths of the first British-sponsored Albanians who parachuted in to remove Enver Hoxhas Communist regime. Grandpas flat is almost exactly as he left it: After Kim left, I didnt want to change anything, Rufa says. She emphasised the strength and goodness of their fathers moral and political beliefs as a committed communist who wanted peaceful co-existence between East and West. The fight against Fascism and the fight against imperialism were fundamentally the same fight.. He believed in freedom of speech and thought that Stalinism and all that were temporary and obviously, the outcome proved otherwise. Fergus announced to some children with whom he was playing that My Daddy wants to stop all wars. To the very end, as I find out when I set foot into his flat, Kim surrounded himself with things pertaining to British culture and life on the other side of the Iron Curtain: from PG Wodehouse novels to the Indian spices he used for his legendary curries. Given a heros burial in Moscows Kuntsevo Cemetery. Required fields are marked *. When Burgess and Maclean fled to Moscow, avoiding capture, Kim was the chief suspect for having given them the heads-up. And whenever we went to stay, wed be picked up from the airport and driven to his flat via a purposefully circuitous route in a KGB car so that no one could quite remember how we got there. This is absolutely the best place for us. So Philby left his wife and children in England in September 1956, arriving in a country for which he had little natural sympathy. There are things I know for certain about my grandfather. George Blake, who is still alive, got on well with him than with Philby. Without a word, he steps out in his long dark trench coat and buffed-leather shoes, opening the back door for me to follow. So, perhaps, by the time he died, a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall and knowing what he must have known by then he did feel disappointed. Harold Adrian Russell " Kim " Philby ORB, OL ODN (1 January 1912 - 11 May 1988) [1] was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. The pair returned to England in May and, by this point already an appointed Soviet agent, Kim found work as a foreign correspondent. He got drunk and roamed Kuybyshev looking for action, on one occasion having his teeth knocked out in a brawl. Kim even duped his own children, and left them behind when he fled to Moscow. He was my grandfather, and then as I grew older it became apparent that he was someone else, too. Takes charge of British intelligence in Spain and Portugal. Melinda put the bravest of faces on her situation when she wrote to her still grief-stricken mother that she understood the suffering she had caused. It seemed a fitting finale for such a notable spy. My second novel is The Times' Book of the Month for July 2020, Chapman Pincher: The Spy-Catcher of Fleet Street, Edith Tudor-Hart: The grandmother of the Cambridge Spies, John le Carr: The writer who made me want to write, ELLE: An unexpected friendship with the other woman. Them the heads-up and the fight against Fascism and the interview lasted barely five minutes all were..., editing its pro-Hitler magazine image: Barney Beech, Kim Philby is born on 1 January Amballa... 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