Book Review: A Spy Among Friends

It's been more than a quarter of a century since he died, and nearly 50 years since the events of which he was prime mover, or villain, depending on how you see it. Even the Cold War, that dangerous game of one-upmanship that the Soviets and America played through the 1950s and 1960s, threatening to tip the globe into nuclear conflagration, is a fading memory now. But the mystique of Kim Philby lives on — the thickening pile of books on him and his friends, dubbed the Cambridge Spy Circle, an indication of his continuing hold on the popular imagination.

Philby was a British spy, a senior officer of MI6 who represented the British spy agency in Washington and was even awarded an OBE for wartime services. So it caused shock waves through Britain when he defected to Soviet Russia in 1964. It was then discovered that he had been working as a double agent leaking British military secrets to the Russians for 20 years.

On the basis of recently de-classified documents, new histories of MI5 and MI6, and the reminiscences of those involved, Ben Macintyre tells the story of just how Philby managed to evade the suspicions of the British spy agencies for so long.

Macintyre's thesis, so basic that it's almost incredible, is that the British intelligence agencies and its foreign office never suspected Philby because he was a part of that very British institution called the "Old Boys' Network" — the circle of men who'd gone to the same elite public school, the same university (Oxford or Cambridge), or the same gentlemen's club. Often, their fathers, and sometimes grandfathers too, had been to the same institutions so the web of connections drew in entire families who, it was assumed, shared the same values. They bonded over cricket, whiskey, gossip, and dislike of Marxism.

It was this network, Macintyre shows, that eased Philby's entry into MI6 and also stopped the bosses from looking too closely into his life and discovering details that would have normally raised hackles. In Philby's case, it wouldn't have been hard to find out that he'd been a member of the Cambridge University Socialist Society, known for its active Marxist sympathies; had married an active member of the underground communist resistance in Nazi Austria (which he'd very carefully kept under wraps), and was on the rolls of the Soviet spy agency while ostensibly covering the Spanish civil war for The Times newspaper.

But the bosses at MI5 and MI6 did not ask the right questions. "Valentine Vivian, the deputy head of MI6," writes Macintyre, describing just how the British class system worked, "who had known Philby's father when they were both colonial officials in India, was prepared to vouch personally for the new recruit, giving what may be the quintessential definition of Britain's Old Boys' network: 'I was asked about him, and said I knew his people'..."

A Spy Among Friends is also a book about Philby's close friendship with Nicholas Elliott, his fellow officer from MI6 whose career rivalled his own in brilliance — until his defection, that is. Macintyre traces the trajectories of Philby and Elliott's careers, — apparently running parallel but actually divergent, and describes the camaraderie and bonhomie, the drinking binges and the family parties to underline just how deep the underlying betrayal was.

The most spectacular instance of how Philby betrayed Elliott, passing on information that he got in confidence from Elliott to the Russians who then used it to sabotage British spy missions, was the 'Lionel Crabbe Affair'. It happened in 1956 when Elliott, as MI6's London station chief, had planned a secret mission to photograph the underside of Russian cruiser Ordzhonikidze, which had brought Nikolai Bulganin, the Russian premier, to London to meet British prime minister — the first such interaction after Cold War hostilities began. The Russians had, apparently, developed a new kind of propeller and underwater sonar technology to evade submarines. But something went wrong and Lionel Crabbe, the diver, disappeared. The Russians complained and it became a major embarrassment for the British political establishment, with Elliott held responsible for the fiasco.

Macintyre concludes, referring to the account of a Soviet sailor who in 2007 claimed to have cut Crabbe's air tubes and killed him on a "tip-off from a British spy", that it was Philby who had alerted Moscow. Philby's betrayal was especially reprehensible because Elliott had just managed to get his friend cleared of the charge of being a Russian mole, fighting a five-year battle with his bosses and putting his entire career and reputation at stake.

The Cold War and the USSR may be history, but with Macintyre focusing on the angle of friendship and betrayal, the story stays relevant and gripping. However, Philby continues to be a grey figure, his motivations for betraying his country and his friend shadowy.