KIM PHILBY BRITAIN’S BIGGEST TRAITOR

One of the UK’s top intelligence operatives was in fact a Soviet double-agent who spent decades handing secrets to the enemy

Callum McKelvie

“I wouldn’t have trusted him with my cat for the weekend”– John le Carré On 11 May 1988, 18 months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Britain’s most notorious traitor, Harold Adrian Russell Philby – better known as ‘Kim’ Philby – passed away. 25 years earlier, in 1963, Philby had fled behind the Iron Curtain to Moscow. After years of suspicion and denial he had finally confessed to being a double-agent working for the Soviet Union. Over two decades (maybe more) Philby and the other members of the notorious Cambridge Five spy-ring – Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross – stole confidential documents, leaked secrets and sabotaged operations. Yet of the five, it is Philby, from his lofty position at the heart of British security agency…

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All About History (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 154

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