Image: Barney Beech, Kim's graveside, at Kuntsovo Cemetry. Britain declares that Philby is the Third Man. I remember Kims words: I have followed exactly the same line the whole of my adult life. 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. In those days, correspondence had to be sent to a PO Box; and in his reply, Kim would sign off under a special code name, Panina (a combination of Pa and Nina, the alias used for Kims wife). The comments below have not been moderated. But, after a silence of nearly five years, here was the first actual sighting and confirmation that the runaways were alive. Life is good here in every way.. On the eve of his 99th birthday, I spent, At Kim's flat with his partner, Rufina. So, too, have I seen images of his cold body decorated with medals in an open coffin, armed guards at either side, as the lavish funeral procession made its way through Kuntsevo Cemetery to this very spot. The KGB's only object in the world is to destroy me and the agency. Anthony Blunt referred to her as the grandmother of the Cambridge spies. He was 65. She put the two boys into the International School in Geneva and finally explained to them what had happened to their father, reporting to her sister that their worst fear seems to be that I might vanish too. Donald Maclean, although arrogant and someone who liked a drink too, was regarded as more convivial. Find out where Kim Philby was born, their birthday and details about their professions, education, religion, family and other life details and facts. While a student at the University of Cambridge, Philby became a communist and in 1933 a Soviet agent. Donald refused to become part of the twilight brigade community of defectors, down-at-heel, disillusioned and wondering how they had got there. 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. 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. It was a miracle. In Spain, reports the Civil War from General Francos side, and is awarded the Red Cross of Military Merit by Franco. Image: Barney Beech, The courtyard outside Kim's flat. Image: Barney Beech, A Sunday Times best book of the year, here is Edith and Kim in review - and where to find signed first editions, An interview with Stephanie Merritt about Edith and Kim, the perils of writing about family, and why female spies often get overlooked, From a compendium of stories about life at the Bauhaus to a Modernist memoir by the founder of the iconic Isokon, here are some of the books that inspired my forthcoming novel, For the Telegraph, I wrote about the woman who recruited my grandfather to the Soviets - the subject of my forthcoming novel Edith and Kim, My tribute to the late - and truly great - master of spy fiction, for the i paper, From a celebration of the life of John le Carr at Cheltenham to an exploration of women and crime in Chiswick, please join me at one of the following events, across the country (and the internet!). Life in Moscow. For some, details like this have fuelled the question of whether arriving for the first time ever in the country for which hed sacrificed everything, which was supposed to represent everything hed fought for, and where he would live out the rest of his days in exile he became disillusioned and embittered, and longed instead for the land hed betrayed. 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. When Burgess and Maclean fled to Moscow, avoiding capture, Kim was the chief suspect for having given them the heads-up. Fergus announced to some children with whom he was playing that My Daddy wants to stop all wars. But more importantly, every decision he made was done consciously. Why British spy Donald Maclean's wife dumped him and their three children for fellow traitor Kim Philby The Maclean's marriage was stormy, with rows, infidelity and bad bahaviour Friends. 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. With his brilliant mind and First from Cambridge, Maclean could bask in being the superior intellect to an under-educated, attractive woman who was both affectionate and popular, where he was withdrawn, giving nothing of himself away. That was my dad leaving to go to Kims funeral [in 1988] and we were hounded by paparazzi. Burgess predeceased him by 20 years, carried off by angina, an abused liver and hardening of the arteries. Writing Edith and Kim alongside home schooling and everything else has been a big thing and I feel now is a good time to pause and reflect. Meets Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross. Without a word, he steps out in his long dark trench coat and buffed-leather shoes, opening the back door for me to follow. 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. 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. He married Litzi Friedman, a fellow activist and an Austrian Jew, to help her escape persecution. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Kim Philby in Russia in 1968, five years after defecting. Hardcover. 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. As Kims former KGB colleague also reiterated on the phone: Kim was a Communist idealist. Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. He did all he could do for a cause he believed in: what was there to regret? 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. In time, details emerged of their lives after they defected. Back in England, begins to cover up his past, joining the Anglo-German Fellowship, editing its pro-Hitler magazine. He worked as a journalist until 1940, when Guy . This is not the first time Charlotte Philby has written in defense of her grandfathers actions. Indeed, when the leading Russian writer Genrikh Borovik was given access to Kims unseen KGB file in 1994 six years after his death the extent to which the Russians mistrusted him became clear. Inside he wrote: Herewith a few extracts from our bible. Entering through the front doors and under a rickety, freestanding metal detector, its like walking through a time-warp. Edith and Kim: The brilliant new historical spy novel based on the true story of the woman behind the Cambridge spies in Cold War espionage. Understandably, as a consequence, he is loathed by many. 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. The controversial civil rights leader was gunned down in front of his wife and children while making a speech in New York. Charlotte is the granddaughter of Kim Philby, Britain's most famous communist double-agent, the elusive 'third man' in the notorious Cambridge spy ring. Now, in an attempt to impose some order on my own understanding of my grandfather, to clarify the kaleidoscopic image of him which has formed in my mind, I have returned for the first time as an adult to the country where, in political exile, he lived out the last 25 years of his life. In his own words: I am really two people. Then, with no more information to be had, the story of the Macleans went dead. In her article, published yesterday in British daily The Independent, she describes Kim Philby as a proud man, and one who chose to publicly stand by his actions. Kim went to great efforts upon his return to England to cover the traces of his Communist background joining the Anglo-German fellowship in 1934, and editing its pro-Hitler magazine; making repeated visits to Berlin for talks with the German propaganda ministry; even being personally presented with the Red Cross of Military Merit award by Franco in 1938. When I happened upon the story of Edith Tudor-Hart, I knew that she was the person I had to write about. 4.1 out of 5 stars. 23. But more generally womens roles in espionage have been sidelined, and I wonder if thats because a lot of this history has been recorded by men. Thanks for this post. 1925Attends Westminster School in London. En route, I pass some of Kims old haunts, and heeding his advice to visitors If you can no longer feel your nose, go inside stop off briefly for coffee at that famous Soviet hangout the Hotel Metropole. 1944Appointed head of Section IX, newly formed to operate against Communism and the Soviet Union. 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. But the place where Kims presence looms largest from every corner is in his study. When its finally made clear that Ive come from England to visit the grave of my grandfather, Kim Philby, a Soviet agent who was given a heros burial somewhere on this land in the late 1980s, the old security man at the gate starts shouting, and shoos me through a private door, into the office where he regales the story to a tall man in a dark trench coat referred to as boss who in turn ushers me outside towards a brand new Range Rover with blackened windows. He needed a secret sharer in his life as well as someone to admire him. As well as being my grandfather whom I remember from childhood trips to Russia as a funny old man with a beaming smile, who dressed almost exclusively in white vests and braces Kim Philby, to this day, remains one of the most significant double agents in modern history. After Donald Maclean fled to Moscow to escape arrest in Britain as the spy who, for 15 years, had passed state secrets to the Soviet Union, friends of his wife, Melinda, found it easy to believe that she knew nothing of her husbands treachery. Shes always cast as a bit player if shes mentioned at all, but she was a remarkable woman. H. A. R. (Kim) Philby, the double agent whose betrayal of his country and his social class indelibly marked British politics, has died in Moscow, officials in London said yesterday. And this was the line Melinda presented to MI5 after his defection with fellow mole Guy Burgess: she had been every bit as duped as theyd been. 1963Disappears in Beirut on 23 January. As for the drinking, Kim never needed an excuse to crack open a bottle; he was a drinker in good times and in bad. Heads to Vienna to serve the movement there. 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. But he also did it to impress her. They took the train to Zurich, where they changed trains to Schwarzach in Austria. The whole plan is being masterminded by Kim Philby in Moscow. There are so many ways that Kims choices have continued to occupy my mind since my dad died in 2009, but I do feel that this book draws a line under it. She would be his silent witness for all the difficult years ahead. Philby had other less damaging routines: a cup of Russian tea at 7am and English tea with milk at 5pm, drunk from a fine porcelain cup. Philby was a 25-year-old reporter for The Times and had just returned from covering the Spanish Civil War when he met rebellious Aileen Furse in London in 1937. Perhaps its too early to judge; after all, Communism, according to its followers, is the final epoch, inevitable only once all other systems have eaten themselves which, of course, they will. 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 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. But though his love affair with the cause never wavered, his love affair with Melinda did. The Second Woman: Best new fiction, Mail on Sunday. They met each other socially but soon fell out. Jeremy Hunt is mocked over toe-curling 'inflation explainer' video by ordering How much will YOUR broadband go up in price? 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. Doubtless Jeremiah faced similar problems.. At one stage, in the programme for his play Single Spies, the writer Alan Bennett printed a claim that my dad John had turned up late to his own fathers funeral, straight from the airport, and stood swaying behind a gravestone clutching bags of booze. They even had a dacha a country cottage 20 miles from Moscow where the children could swim, fish, bicycle and forage for mushrooms. 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. He barely embraced his wife. 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'. The Macleans lived well, housed in a smart building overlooking the river, in a splendid six-room flat which they gradually filled with bric--brac and furniture shipped from home. Eleanor Kearns was born in Seattle in 1914. n ADAPTED from A Spy Named Orphan by Roland Philipps, to be published by The Bodley Head on April 26 at 20. He had got afraid that I would leave, and hidden the boot.". Kim Philby on holiday with his last wife Rufina Pukhova, 1970s. 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. Journalists look after their own and Philby masqueraded as a devil-may-care drunken newspaperman and so was treated more indulgently by those in his profession.. Little Donald said perhaps he had gone to India because that would be a good place to hide., Donald Maclean with his wife Melinda Marling and his two sons Ronald and Fergus in the 50s, Wanted pictures are posted at a Berlin checkpoint for Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, Guy Burgess (pictured) did not cope well to life in the Soviet Union - he got drunk and roamed Kuybyshev looking for action, on one occasion having his teeth knocked out in a brawl. Philby was a chap. 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. Donald Maclean pictured in his teens whilst at Gresham School - he fell for Melinda the moment he met her among the bohemian set he socialised with in Paris, Donald Maclean Soviet was Third Secretary in Paris for the British Embassy and stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries in the back row, (second from the right), Donald Maclean (arrowed in the second rank) taking part in an anti-war march in Cambridge in 1933. He passed over 900 British documents to the KGB. Five minutes later, Im watching the shadow of a tall, leafless tree falling against the snow on the path in front of my grandfathers tombstone, wondering who it was whod been here in the past few hours and placed a bunch of brightly coloured flowers at the foot of his grave. In her article, published yesterday in British daily The Independent, she describes Kim Philby as "a proud man, and one who chose to publicly stand by his actions". Edith and Kim by Charlotte Philby is published by HarperCollins (14.99). Today, this pedestrianised street is only accessible by a coded gate, and the faade of the building has been tarted up almost beyond recognition. How? To see through to the end what he started? Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan states in Parliament that there is no evidence of Philby having betrayed the interests of Britain. Some could never quite come to terms that he was a traitor. Laying flowers at my grandfather's grave. The two men said very little and the interview lasted barely five minutes. A few days after her return to Switzerland, she told her mother she had run into an old friend in the local market and hed invited her and the children to stay with him for the weekend in his villa at the other end of Lake Geneva. And all along he was handing information straight back into the hands of the Russians. Melinda fitted the bill. He got himself a job teaching English in a school. 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. 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. Two years later he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Many of the street names have changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. "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. Which author do you most admire?I dont have favourites, but I love Helen Dunmore. Today, Moscows main strip, Tverskaya Ryad which I remember from childhood holidays as a drab grey stretch clotted with queues of people who looked like they didnt know what they were waiting for (though it was usually oranges or ice cream) is barely recognisable: a knot of designer stores and mobile-phone shops, interspersed with garish billboards hanging between the buildings above the busy main road. Chicago-born Melinda, whom he married in France in 1940, knew all along that Donald was a spy. Her mood changed, though, with Stalins death in March 1953 and the prospect that the Soviet Union might now become a more open place. How easy did you find it to capture Kims voice?I spent so long with his letters and they gave me such an insight into the expressions he used, the way he spoke, how he flipped between being tender and reflective and witty and scathing, and his very English obsession with the weather. On one occasion, when dropping us off at the airport, Kim and my dad were so sloshed they were shoved into a cupboard under the stairs with a bottle of vodka by staff to keep them quiet, while the British ambassador ambled around the main terminal building waiting for the same flight to London. But out of a smaller window, in front of the door, the view of Moscow is interrupted by a throbbing neon Samsung advert. Best thrillers for July 2021, The Times. The Philby talent for putting on an act has been inherited by Charlotte, in a sense: she worked in theatre as a child, training with Anna Scher, whose radical Islington theatre group has spotted such talent as Kathy Burke and Phil Daniels. The basic facts, after all, are well-documented. So Philby left his wife and children in England in September 1956, arriving in a country for which he had little natural sympathy. Many times Ive pored over images of the tall, polished tombstone with the Cyrillic script, and the image of his face etched on its surface, in newspaper cuttings and family photos. Of course, if there is a conflict, the political person comes first.. Philby was a 19-year-old art student when his father was exposed in 1963 as a traitor. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group. Of course, he made bold and hugely controversial decisions, some of which had fatal consequences, but he didnt do so lightly. It's Mr (coffee) Bean! John Philby, who has died aged 65, was the eldest son of the Russian spy Kim Philby, unmasked in 1963 as a double agent and the notorious Third Man in the Cambridge spy ring of the 1930s. Macleans outward calm in the face of exile was greatly bolstered by his wifes support. But neither was entirely impervious. This is absolutely the best place for us. In any case, even if an address had been known for grandpa, it may not have been much use in 2010. Donald is well and happy to be with his family again. 1929Enters Trinity College, Cambridge. Was he wrong to have continued on the Communist path once so many others had stepped off? Today, as Kims widow greets me at the door, offering me a pair of woollen slippers, the atmosphere is quiet and calm. 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. When author Charlotte Philby's partner ended their relationship, her world fell apart. She hoped Donald would now find a way of getting in touch with her. He said, 'Why do old people live so badly here? He and Pukhova married in 1971, when he was 59 and she was 38. Kim Philbys oldest son, has penned an extensive account of her memories of her grandfather. The view from one of the windows is notably different, too. By the time she left Russia, Maclean was in his final decline, in and out of hospital with cancer from his lifetime of smoking. 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. And sadness. birth date: 1912-01-01. birth place: Ambala. Melinda walked out on her husband, leaving the children with Donald, and moved in with Philby. But so it was. One can hardly overlook the irony of a man who so resolutely betrayed his country, surrounding himself in his Soviet apartment with British condiments, newspapers and light-hearted English classics. He travelled extensively, while also making his way up the ranks of the British intelligence services by 1944, Kim was appointed head of a newly formed anti-Soviet section, and was later sent to Washington where, as the top Secret Intelligence Service representative, he worked for several years in liaison with the CIA and FBI. Getty Images In the USSR, Philby essentially became an honorary pensioner: he passed on to Soviet intelligence everything he. But I dont think my grandfather ever questioned a single decision he made. But they were quasi-spy novels so I ended up talking about them in relation to his story anyway. The gramophone, in front of which Kim would take a seat to listen to the World Service at 7pm every evening with a cup of coffee, makes a tremendous groan as it comes to life, but its still very much in working nick. Next to articles about him online, readers routinely describe him as evil and a cancer on society. I think Ive spent so long having other people project their versions of my grandfather and my family on to me that writing about it is a way of trying to reclaim the story. But at the famous Secret Trial in 1952, he convinced his MI5 interrogator Buster Milmo that he was not a Soviet agent. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which had divulged British secrets to the Soviets during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. Grandpas flat is almost exactly as he left it: After Kim left, I didnt want to change anything, Rufa says. Personal life. George Blake, who is still alive, got on well with him than with Philby. When you look at the way Edith is referred to in the [security services] files as that foreign woman, I wonder whether theres a sense of embarrassment too. 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. 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. November 16, 2017. Takes charge of British intelligence in Spain and Portugal. In fact, he had arrived in Moscow days earlier, and can be seen on film standing just back from his fathers coffin. . Inside, however, the lift is as temperamental as it ever was, so I make the journey to his flat by foot, instantly recognising the strange studded-leather front door as I emerge from the stairwell. Cambridge-educated Nicholas Elliott and Kim Philby became close friends in 1940, when they were both working in separate departments of the British Intelligence . In 1949 Kim Philby became SIS representative in Washington, as top British Secret Service officer working in liaison with the CIA and FBI. And it is to these that my mind turns as I make my way from my hotel, across Red Square, the following day towards Kims flat, following the route marked out in pencil on a rather vague map drawn up from the combined memories of various family members, none of whom has been here in more than 20 years. 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! Kim Philby In Moscow: Not What He Wished For. Charlotte Philby, daughter of John Philby, H.A.R. He was happy in Moscow and fulfilled by his work. Who is going to check 55 volumes for the odd sentence? Macleans study resembled that of a Cambridge professor, with copies of Trollope, biographies of Gladstone and airmail editions of The Times. 1957Aileen Furse, Philbys second wife, dies. Prince and Princess of Wales pay tribute to Auschwitz survivor Zigi Shipper, who dedicated his life to No rest for Anne! But in Russia he is still admired as a hero. 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. 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. The Soviet authorities buried him with honors when he died in 1988. 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. He reported to the Soviet NKVD from the Spanish civil war under the guise of a correspondent for the Times, and in 1940 joined the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, or MI6), becoming a double agent and passing many secrets to the Kremlin. 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. He feared that she would dump him because he was just a boring official in the British diplomatic service so to make myself look better and more important, I told her the reason why I led such a life. Later she became a journalist at the Independent. 1949Made SIS representative in Washington. What counted though against Blunt, and Burgess too, was that they werent journo-friendly. ben's bagels portsmouth, nh, bill cipher text to speech,