They seldom discussed their fears, or hopes, for theirs was a most English friendship, founded on cricket, alcohol and jokes, based on a shared set of assumptions about the world, and their privileged place in it. They were as close as two heterosexual, upper-class, mid-century Englishmen could be. [loc. 3972]
No, not another biography of the infamous Kim Philby, who was a double agent reporting to the Russians as well as to MI6 and who defected in 1963. A Spy Among Friends takes a different approach, describing Philby's career -- and how he got away with treason and murder for so long -- in the context of his close friendships with Nicholas Elliott, who he knew at Cambridge, and James J. Angleton, the CIA's chief of counterintelligence. MacIntyre describes the paradox of friendship (and especially upper-class English friendship): a shared set of assumptions about the world, competitive drinking, an old boys' network which valued loyalty above all else, and a distinct lack of emotional candour.
MacIntyre is a very readable author (I picked this up after reading Agent ZigZag, another of his non-fiction books about a WW2 spy) and this was as good as a thriller. (Indeed, the afterword is by John Le Carre, who knew Elliott at MI6 and later had a series of conversations with him about Philby. "Was I contemplating a novel built around the Philby-Elliott relationship? I can’t have been. I’d already covered the ground in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. A piece of live theatre, perhaps? A two-hander, the Nick and Kim Show, spread over twenty years of mutual affection – I dare almost call it love – and devastating, relentless betrayal?" [loc. 4692]) A number of familiar events -- for instance, Lionel Crabb, the Navy frogman who died investigating the Russian warship Ordzhonikidze while she was visiting Portsmouth in 1956 -- assume a different significance if Philby, as described by MacIntyre, was involved. He may have betrayed Crabb's mission to the Russians, who captured and killed the diver. Philby almost certainly betrayed a number of German and Albanian agents who were working against the Nazis. ‘I was responsible for the deaths of a considerable number of Germans,’, he wrote later, not mentioning that some of these had been on the side of the Allied forces.
The focus of the book is very much on Philby as a likeable, charismatic, clubbable fellow. Few ever suspected him, even when with hindsight his treachery seems evident. (Informed by his Russian handler of Maclean's imminent arrest by the British security services, Philby warned Burgess of the danger to them all, thus facilitating Burgess and Maclean's defections. Philby was one of the very few people in a position to warn the men, and Burgess had been staying in his house. Elliott's unwavering conviction of Philby's innocence saved him from discovery, though he was forced to resign.) Philby was clearly very good at friendship, and one can't help feeling sorry for Elliott, even more than for Angleton (who destroyed all papers relating to his association with Philby because 'it was all very embarrassing').
Plenty here, too, about Philby's wives, and his pet fox, and his fraught relationship with his father: now I want to re-reread Declare with a firmer grip on what's real and what's invented. But as MacIntyre demonstrates, Philby's 'real' life was as much an invention as many works of fiction.
Fulfils the ‘About Friendship’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge.
No comments:
Post a Comment