He had friends, a wife; he indulged himself in a culture he loved the concerts, the ballet, the galleries; he travelled to Cuba, East Berlin, around the Soviet Union, and spent weekends at his beloved dacha. He married Litzi Friedman, a fellow activist and an Austrian Jew, to help her escape persecution. But they were quasi-spy novels so I ended up talking about them in relation to his story anyway. 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. Her mood changed, though, with Stalins death in March 1953 and the prospect that the Soviet Union might now become a more open place. Kim Philby with partner Melinda Maclean (who later returned to her husband and fellow spy, Donald Maclean) walk in the woods outside Moscow in the 1960's, photographed by his son John, Donald Maclean pictured in 1937 whilst on a skiing holiday - he fled to Moscow to escape arrest in Britain as the spy who, for 15 years, had passed state secrets to the Soviet Union, Melinda Maclean and her sons in their last European home in Geneva 1953 -she was slight with curly, dark hair, 'an under-educated, attractive woman who was both affectionate and popular'. Then she drove off with the children. 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. How? Just Stop Oil protester avoids jail after moaning that he had 'ruined his life' and damaged his relationship Millionaire businessman, 44, found with 10,000 worth of magic mushrooms growing in bathroom of his home in Was it all for the cameras? Kim was appointed head of a newly formed anti-Soviet section, and as the top Secret Intelligence Service representative, worked for several years in liaison with the CIA and FBI all along handing information straight back into the hands of the Russians. "There was one funny incident," she remembered. The two men said very little and the interview lasted barely five minutes. In Spain, reports the Civil War from General Francos side, and is awarded the Red Cross of Military Merit by Franco. Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan states in Parliament that there is no evidence of Philby having betrayed the interests of Britain. Standing on the balcony, you can see the same school playground, where children in heavy ski jackets are involved in a timeless game launching themselves from the top of a flight of concrete stairs to the ground below, cushioned with thick blankets of snow. Required fields are marked *. He achieved the deception by employing his occasional stutter, so as to buy himself time to think before telling another bare-faced lie. Getty Images In the USSR, Philby essentially became an honorary pensioner: he passed on to Soviet intelligence everything he. Doubtless Jeremiah faced similar problems.. Melinda Maclean. Next to articles about him online, readers routinely describe him as evil and a cancer on society. His father had a distinguished past as an explorer and fixer for the region's movers and shakers, and any intelligence Kim could pick up through his father's outstanding contacts would be useful to the bosses in . Recently I found a paparazzo shot of my dad with a suitcase getting into a car and me, aged five, looking into the camera, and I had this moment of recognition. He was my grandfather, and then as I grew older it became apparent that he was someone else, too. Cambridge-educated Nicholas Elliott and Kim Philby became close friends in 1940, when they were both working in separate departments of the British Intelligence . We walk on in silence; the others hold back, bowing their heads, as I take my place in front of another plot a few feet away. n ADAPTED from A Spy Named Orphan by Roland Philipps, to be published by The Bodley Head on April 26 at 20. The shiny black 44 rumbles slowly through the graveyard. The spy novelist, whose latest book tells the story of her grandfather Kim Philby and the Soviet agent Edith Tudor-Hart, talks about the perils of writing about family, and why female spies get overlooked. All was reasonably well between them until Kim Philby the master-spy who recruited him back in their Cambridge days himself defected in 1963. (4 children) Litzi Friedmann (24 February 1934 - 1946) (divorced . As Kims former KGB colleague also reiterated on the phone: Kim was a Communist idealist. By the time she left Russia, Maclean was in his final decline, in and out of hospital with cancer from his lifetime of smoking. Aileen and the children also moved to America and the Philby's took a spacious, ramshackle two-storeyed place at 4100 Nebraska Avenue. "Once, a big group of us were on a trip on the Volga: Kim and I and, of course, his KGB escort, and the escort's daughter. Kim Philby, the most successful of the Cambridge spies, tried to drink himself to death in Moscow because he was disillusioned with communism and tortured by his own failings, his last wife has said in an interview. 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. George Blake, who is still alive, got on well with him than with Philby. We got together in our cabin to discuss our plans. In time, details emerged of their lives after they defected. 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. Without a word, he steps out in his long dark trench coat and buffed-leather shoes, opening the back door for me to follow. He was previously married to Rufina Ivanovna Pukhova, Eleanor Brewer, Aileen Furse and Litzi Friedmann. Burgess predeceased him by 20 years, carried off by angina, an abused liver and hardening of the arteries. Shes always cast as a bit player if shes mentioned at all, but she was a remarkable woman. The basic facts, after all, are well-documented. Im conscious that his story belongs to different people in different ways, within our family and also more widely. Lese Part of the Family gratis von Charlotte Philby Verfgbar als Hrbuch Jetzt 14 Tage gratis testen. He fell for her the moment he met her among the bohemian set he socialised with in Paris, where he was a British diplomat. Eventually, Melinda went back to her home country, the U.S., bringing to an end nearly 40 years of endurance, loyalty and betrayal. In the intervening years, there have been endless attempts to understand how this gregarious, public-school educated English chap and his fellow Cambridge spies Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross could have been persuaded to betray their country, and dupe their family and their friends. Lets have another drink on it, old man. Good old Kim. I would like to have drawn Bennett further on his comments, but unfortunately, when I contacted his agent to request a meeting, my invitation was declined. Aileen died in 1957, when Tommy was just 11 years old; his contact with his father was cut off as soon as the double spy defected to the USSR in January 1963. Halfway there, they switched cars and drove to a small airport in the Soviet zone of Austria. 1912Harold Adrian Russell Kim Philby is born on 1 January in Amballa, India, the son of Dora and St John. It is an old-fashioned home, not like the homes of new Russia, where everything is modern and imported. She cannot imagine what Kim would have made of this new world, where a minority have benefited so enormously while many outside the capital, the vast majority live in abject poverty with little support from the state. 1940Recruited by British Secret Services and attached to the Secret Intelligence Services (SIS) under Guy Burgess. The little blue pill really is magic! Elegant Princess of Wales is all smiles as she plays with children on visit to a nursery amid backlash over Thrifty Kate strikes again! Philby had defected to the Soviet Union from Beirut in 1963, and was treated with respect, but felt isolated. She flew to New York to see her daughter Annie, and it was there that several letters arrived from Philby. Thanks for this post. It was a few years after this, in 1933, that Kim went to Vienna. His ashes were brought back to England, as he had requested, and buried in his parents grave after dark and by torchlight so that the press would not get wind of it. And he kept his word to the end." But as the author Graham Greene my grandfathers close friend and a fellow British intelligence officer, who worked under him at MI6 wrote in the introduction to Kims autobiography, My Silent War: The end, of course, in his eyes is held to justify the means, but this is a view taken, perhaps less openly, by most men involved in politics, if we are to judge them by their actions, whether the politician be a Disraeli or a Wilson. Donald Maclean pictured in 1937 while on a skiing holiday - in the Soviet Union he and Guy Burgess described themselves as political refugee, not spies, Donald Maclean with his daughter Mimsie near their country home in England - in the Soviet Union he assumed a new identity, chosing to be Mark Petrovich Frazer (after the Cambridge anthropologist Sir James Frazer), Donald Maclean, aged four, can be seen on the right of this picture on the right of this picture. "Kim said to me, 'I came here totally fully of information, I wanted to give everything I had but no one was interested," explained Pukhova. He was 65. Kim Philby was unmasked as a Soviet double agent in July 1963 when . He didnt seem to mind that their marriage was over. 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. Primary Sources. She sensed that the Macleans marriage was a difficult one again, with Donald on occasion still getting hopelessly drunk. Charlotte Philby, daughter of John Philby, H.A.R. Rather than angrily confront Philby, the American stated he would ask with considerable satisfaction, "How do . She is also the granddaughter of Kim Philby, the notorious double-agent known as the third man in the Cambridge spy ring. A plaque in his honour was unveiled by the head of the foreign intelligence service at its headquarters in Moscow in December. Kim Philby met his first wife the Jewess, Litzi Friedman in Vienna, and it was Friedman, a dyed-in-the-wool communist, who convinced Philby to become a fellow KGB . Inside, the atrium leading to the main sorting office and collection point is now dotted with stalls selling electronic goods, pricey mobile-phone accessories and flowers at 3 a stem. When author Charlotte Philby's partner ended their relationship, her world fell apart. children: John David Philby Josephine F. Philby Dudley Thomas Philby Miranda Philby Harry George Philby Birth. The Soviet authorities buried him with honors when he died in 1988. In the end despite having been what Allen Dulles (de facto head of the CIA from 1953 to 1961) once reluctantly described as the best spy Russia ever had Kim was watched over as much as looked after by his masters, and he was not used to his full potential. No doubt your grandfather would have disapproved of the sharp contrasts in present-day Russia, he said. Whatever you believe, Kim felt history would prove him right: Ill be remembered as a good man, he told my mum just two years before his death. It had been a long time coming. Like your own Holy Writ, it is open to many different (and often conflicting) interpretations, according to the tastes and prejudices of the reader., In the accompanying letter, he adds: The difficulty is that [Lenin] was always writing at white-heat on burning questions of the day (or even hour); and naturally his strategy and tactics changed to meet changing circumstances My Russian edition has 55 large volumes, so there is ample room for selective quotation and even spurious interpolation. Because hed told her from the very start. 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. Rebuilding it meant forging a unique friendship with the very woman he left her for. Over the years he did everything that was asked of him: he gave everything he had to the cause, and yet still Moscow was deeply suspicious of a man who has been described as their finest and most loyal servant. He was able to order new books from Bowes & Bowes bookshop in Cambridge, who checked with MI5 whether they should be supplying him. But her latest article contains several interesting anecdotes, including an episode at Moscows Sheremetyevo International Airport, when Soviet airport staff scrambled frantically to work around the fact that they had accidentally scheduled [the Philbys, who were returning from visiting Kim,] on the same flight back to London as the British ambassador, who was wafting around the terminal in a pinstripe suit. Today, this pedestrianised street is only accessible by a coded gate, and the faade of the building has been tarted up almost beyond recognition. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); The Philby case has always fascinated me. References. I am a private person and a political person. Born in India in 1912, Philby became a communist sympathiser after leaving Cambridge and began working as a KGB informer in the mid 1930s in London. A retired CIA agent was once asked what he would say to Kim Philby, an MI5 agent who spied for Joseph Stalin, if he encountered the defector in Moscow. 1962George Blake is caught. Feeling a strong dissatisfaction with British policy in the Middle East, Kims father resigned from the Foreign Service in 1930, converting to Islam and taking the name Hajj Abdullah. Photograph: Daily Mail/Rex Features, MI5missed early chance to expose Soviet agent Kim Philby, files reveal, Charlotte Philby: We visited Kim in Moscow, Love and Deception: Philby in Beirut by James Hanning review the spy who loved, maybe, ASplinter of Ice review Graham Greene and Kim Philby clink glasses, Graham Greenes showdown with Soviet spy Kim Philby: A Splinter of Ice review, KimPhilby: new revelations about spy emerge in secret files, George Blake exemplified the desolation, waste and treachery of the cold war, Moscow names square after British double agent Kim Philby, Athriller of spies and betrayal: by Kim Philbys granddaughter. 1946Moves to Turkey, working as head of SIS there. Bungling helicopter pilot blows over stadium roof injuring eight, BBC Breakfast celebrates forty years of hilarious bloopers, Ken Bruce will be joining the Greatest Hits Radio family in April, As it happened: UK Government blocks Scotland's new gender law, Royal Family will find it 'impossible' to compromise with Sussexes, Extinction Rebellion douse the Home Office building in black paint, Harrowing moment woman begs father not to kill himself, Motorists slowly drive down snowy hill in treacherous conditions, Shamima Begum never considered turning back during journey to ISIS, Kamala opts out of kneeling with Biden for Warriors photo op. Some could never quite come to terms that he was a traitor. She was a horsey product of the. 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. Kim leapt up and shouted, 'Whoever is rude to my wife is rude to me!' Where do you write?I wrote Edith and Kim all over the place because weve been in the process of moving house for the past couple of years, but now I have a shed at the bottom of our garden where I can feel Im in the middle of nowhere, and Im never leaving! What are you writing next?After publishing four novels in four years, Im taking more time to write the next one. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group. He always knew what he was risking his family, his friends, his reputation and he made his choices accordingly. In the programme for his play Single Spies, the writer Alan Bennett printed a claim that my dad had turned up late to his own fathers funeral, straight from the airport, and stood swaying behind a gravestone clutching bags of booze. There, he volunteered for the refugee committee, fundraising, secretly writing and disseminating propaganda, raising funds and distributing clothes and money to those whod escaped Fascist Germany. Men with erectile dysfunction who take Viagra are 25% less likely to Money saving guru Martin Lewis reveals easy FIRST step to clearing thousands of pounds in debt. But as the months turned into years and no word came from him, she sank into depression at the realisation that she was now bringing up their children alone. It was, in fact, those journeys to Kims flat which form some of my strongest early memories: flying down the third lane of the motorway in an unmarked car. But, after a silence of nearly five years, here was the first actual sighting and confirmation that the runaways were alive. He became more optimistic once the family was deemed fully rehabilitated and they moved to Moscow in 1955. Theirs had always been a stormy marriage, punctuated by bad behaviour on both sides and terrible rows. Although she would be left pitied, even censured, and alone in a country in which she had spent barely one-tenth of her life, it might be better that he should be free to live a new life in Moscow than spend a decade behind bars. 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 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 . An Indian Civil Service officer turned Arabist and explorer, he spent 20 years travelling across the desert on camelback charting Saudis unexplored Empty Quarter, crossing paths with Lawrence of Arabia, and eventually marrying a slave-girl given to him by his friend King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, to whom he spent many years as personal advisor. But more importantly, every decision he made was done consciously. Kim sacrificed everything he had: he risked his life and the lives of others, he betrayed his colleagues and duped his family and friends (even spying on his own father at one stage, as will be explained shortly) because he genuinely believed from the point when he joined the movement and set his sights against the seemingly irrepressible rise of Fascism that Communism was a cause worth holding dear above all else. After all, they won the war.'". There have been endless attempts to understand how this gregarious, public-school educated English chap and his fellow Cambridge spies could have been persuaded to betray their country, and dupe their family and their friends. In this article for The Independent Magazine, I returned to Moscow to discover the truth about my grandfather, the infamous Third Man.
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