Spies like us
The global politics of the late 1930s that birthed Philby and Elliott, both at Cambridge and then as they pursued their early careers, were febrile, tense and complicated. The Great War had ended over a decade earlier, but the peace was fragile, and the feeling that a new, even greater conflagration was just around the corner was palpable.
The UK establishment watched Hitler’s rise in Germany with alarm. And during the Spanish Civil War, over 4000 young British men joined to fight against the fascists. “The 1930s was a time of intense intellectual ferment,” says Ben Macintyre. “It was quite understandable to see communism as the only bulwark against the march of fascism. The communists seemed to be on the right side of history to many young people.”
A time of extremes
two spies
A tale of
One sunny afternoon in 1934, at Litzi's behest, Philby sat on a bench in Regent’s Park beside a man called ‘Otto’ – AKA Arnold Deutsch – a recruiter for Soviet intelligence. But what 'Otto' said surprised him. He urged Philby to disguise his political leanings, and become, outwardly, a respectable member of the establishment. Moscow had a plan: to penetrate the intelligence services via a network of double agents. Philby (codename ‘Sonny’) had become the Cambridge Spy Ring’s founding member.
At Cambridge, Philby joined the Socialist Society, and became friends with Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. On a trip to Germany in 1933 he witnessed Nazi violence at a Jewish rally. “I left university with the conviction my life must be devoted to communism" he said.
In Austria, then under right-wing dictator, Engelbert Dolfuss, Philby fell in love with and married Communist Underground member Litzi Kohlman. After they fled to London, Philby was eager to further the communist cause.
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“The man I trusted most, and my best friend, was a Russian spy. Try to imagine how that might feel. You could say I don’t know who to trust anymore.”
“Elliott and Philby were cut from the same cloth.”
James Hanning, author of Love and Deception: Philby in Beirut
The young radical
"I was to hand them to my Soviet contact in the evening. The next morning I would get the file back, the contents having been photographed, take them back early... and put the files back in their place. That I did regularly, year in, year out.”
The Russians couldn’t believe their luck. In fact, for a while, they didn’t. Poring over the documents in Moscow, they became convinced Philby must be a triple agent. How could MI6 allow such a betrayal, right under their noses?
The betrayal begins
From the moment he arrived at MI6, Philby started his campaign of deceit, pumping his fellow officers – including Elliott – for information and sending it straight to his KGB handlers in Moscow.
Exclusive new ITVX show A Spy Among Friends is a compelling psychological drama exploring the real-life story of MI6 agents Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis) and Kim Philby (Guy Pearce) whose relationship implodes when double agent Philby’s decades-long duplicity is revealed.
Exploring the deeply polarised politics of the time, the complex machinations of MI6 in an ever-changing world, and the personal betrayal at the heart of it all, this fascinating study of how friendship, trust and loyalty can be manipulated is your new must-watch. Stream all six episodes free on ITVX now.
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Damian Lewis as MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott in A Spy Among Friends
Here we explore Philby and Elliott’s families, formative years, politics and psychology, their complex relationship and the breathtaking deception that ultimately tore them apart...
In March 1963 one name dominated newspaper headlines – Kim Philby.
The former MI6 officer, who had been one of the highest-ranking members of the British Intelligence Services, had finally been unmasked as a traitor, a double agent working for the KGB. For 23 years he had been passing the nation's most critical secrets to his paymasters in Moscow in one of the most shocking scandals in spy history.
The shocking revelations about Philby’s decades spent as a KGB double agent have made headline news since his exposure in 1963
decades of deceit
a friend betrayed
A SPY UNMASKED
But Philby’s decades of duplicity also had a profound personal impact.
Since 1940, his closest confidante had been Nicholas Elliott, a fellow MI6 officer he had befriended when the pair were fledgeling recruits, whose trust and loyalty he had ruthlessly exploited throughout. Adding another twist to the tale, it would be Elliott who was sent to confront Philby and somehow extract a confession from his former friend.
Upper class, charming, stylish, ruthless – Philby had all the elements of the perfect spy
The gripping story of this friendship is the subject of compelling new ITVX series A Spy Among Friends.
The six-part psychological drama, inspired by true events, and based on the bestselling book by Ben Macintyre, stars Guy Pearce as Kim Philby and Damian Lewis as Nicholas Elliott. But who were these two men? And how had one ended up a loyal intelligence officer, and the other a notorious traitor?
A Spy Among Friends throws fresh light on the Philby affair via his close friendship with fellow MI6 agent Nicholas Elliott
It was that shared culture, and what he assumed to be their common values, that made it unthinkable for Elliott that his affable, funny friend could, in reality, be a ruthless traitor.
So how did these two men – so similar on paper – end up so diametrically opposed?
But domestic right-wing movements were also growing. In 1932 Sir Oswald Mosley had founded the British Union Of Fascists, finding some supporters among the disenfranchised working classes and sections of the press. At one point it boasted 50,000 members.
This politically incendiary atmosphere was reflected in the debates that raged in the bars and common rooms of Cambridge. It was a time when many young people found themselves picking sides. And by the time they met at MI6, although outwardly their politics appeared to align, Philby and Elliott had radically different visions of the world they wanted to make.
Philby and Elliott came from the same privileged circles, from public schools to their alma mater Cambridge, to the members clubs they frequented
The 1930s was a time of extreme global conflict, from the brutality of the Spanish Civil War to Hitler's terrifying rise in Germany
Polar politics
Both Philby and Elliott were appalled by the rise of fascism, and implacably committed to the defeat of Hitler. But their core beliefs, their political souls, were polar opposites. For Elliott, fascism was to be triumphed over by the democratic, liberal values of the western powers. For Philby, these were part, if not all, of the problem.
The young radical
RECRUITED
BY RUSSIA
The establishment man
Underworld London
2 iconic locations captured in A Spy Among Friends
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POPULATION 864,816
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location
54 Broadway
The RAC Club
The Admiral’s Glass
But over time Philby’s loyalties became clear. In 1943 Elliott triumphantly supervised the defection of a young German agent Eric Vermehren, who had information on the Catholic Underground, an organisation opposed to both Hitler and Stalin. The list of names Elliott trustingly shared with Philby were immediately handed over to the KGB. Later on, as the Russians advanced through Germany, hundreds, possibly thousands of Catholics were shot.
Philby also upended ‘Operation Valuable’ – an attempt by the CIA and MI6 to infiltrate Albania (then under the rule of communist dictator Enver Hoxha) with counterrevolutionary forces. Philby both masterminded and oversaw the operation, keeping the KGB informed throughout. To the bafflement of the intelligence agencies, and despite repeated attempts, almost all the men sent on the mission were captured and shot. Including their families, and those identified as collaborators, the death toll may have been in the thousands.
Philby began his campaign of betrayal from as soon as he joined MI6, leaking crucial documents and information to the KGB
“They were very close. They shared a love for cricket and long lunches with a pink gin tipple.” – James Hanning, Love And Deception: Philby In Beirut
The precise details of Philby and Elliott’s first meeting are lost to history. Perhaps it was in the much-used bar nestled in the bowels of the MI6 building at 54 Broadway (with a plaque labelled ‘The Minimax Fire Extinguisher Company’). Both enjoyed pink gin and cricket. Thus they struck up an enduring friendship.
Pink gin and cricket: a friendship forged at MI6
The establishment man
While Philby was mesmerised and energised by the political wars fought at Cambridge, Elliott was almost oblivious to them. “He’s a much more complacent intellectual figure,” says Ben Macintyre. "He accepts the world he’s been born into as the right one.”
In April 1939, Elliott witnessed Hitler’s 50th birthday in Berlin. The ghastly militaristic display of troops and warplanes horrified him. On his return he joined MI6.
Tricks of the trade
Dead
drop
Covert comms
Surveillance
Tailing
Delivering info via unremarkable objects: such as the KGB message jotted on a beer mat Philby receives in Beirut
Philby receives a secret message written in invisible ink on a cigarette packet which he has to heat up to read
Bugging abounds, with Elliott and Philby both recorded via devices hidden in everyday objects around their homes
Elliott surreptitiously follows Philby to a meeting with a mystery woman when some of his behaviour is called into question
DOSSIER
02
“The word most consistently used to describe Kim Philby was ‘charm’, that intoxicating, beguiling and occasionally deadly English quality.”
Superficially, Philby and Elliott seemed a natural match. But under the surface, was there something deeper and darker drawing them together?
A fatal friendship
Ben Macintyre
An easy target?
CHARMING TO A FAULT
POPULATION 864,816
VIEW ON MAP
54 Broadway
The MI6 headquarters where Elliott and Philby conducted their intelligence work boasted a fake plaque that read 'The Minimax Fire Extinguisher Company'
The RAC Club
In the pool of this exclusive members club, located in Pall Mall and founded in 1897, Elliott roadtests a covert spy operation using a diver
Dressed to kill
It seems impossible to us now that Elliott could have been so naive. Did he know more than he was letting on? Was it all a carefully laid trap? Or did he simply not want to consider the awful possibility that he had been Philby’s dupe all these years?
Duped? Or duplicitous?
“You're dealing with a very small, tightly-knit club here," says Ben Macintyre. They're a tribe and they didn't want to look at this. It was: 'Oh well, he probably dabbled with communism at some point, there's no evidence and who hasn't?' But really, I think Elliott had been fighting off suspicion since 1955. At some level, in his heart, he knew – between suspected and knew. That's why when the moment comes, it’s both appalling and a relief. It destroys Elliott, it destroys Philby, their whole world comes apart. But there’s a relief in that sudden clarity.”
By the early 1960s, Philby was enjoying a pleasant existence in Beirut, being paid both as a journalist and by MI6. But he had other irons in the fire. He had, perhaps inevitably given his nature, resumed spying for the KGB shortly after his arrival.
The good times weren’t to last. The capture of spy George Blake and a series of defections, including KGB officer Anatoly Golistyn, reignited MI5’s suspicions about Philby, which had never truly been quelled. Then the dam broke. A woman called Flora Solomon came forward saying Philby had attempted to recruit her for Moscow shortly after leaving Cambridge.
Finally, Elliott was convinced. Philby had been lying to him, to everyone, from the start. When MI5 said it intended to act, Elliott demanded that he be the one to confront Philby.
So, in January 1963, Nicholas Elliott sat opposite his friend of over twenty years in a tatty Beirut flat. Perhaps he thought of the pink gins they had swigged, the cricket they had watched, the jokes they had exchanged. “We’ve known each other forever, so if you don't mind I’ll get straight to the point,” Elliott said. “And I’m afraid it’s not very pleasant.”
Was Elliott really unaware of Philby's activities across the 23 years they spent together as colleagues and friends? Or did he just not want to know?
“Otto – AKA Arnold Deutsch – the Soviet recruiter of the Cambridge spies, was a man of extreme charisma and high intellect. Here he flatters Philby. Every spymaster has to convince their recruit they have a very special relationship. It's a seduction.”
Anatomy of a confession
A ruined life?
“Elliott covered it up, but he was shattered by the Philby affair,” says Macintyre. “He was regarded as a fool by his peers, which was very painful for him.” He retired in 1968, joining the board of Lonhro and buying a share in a racehorse. Later he advised Thatcher on security. But sometimes he thought of Philby. “Outwardly he was a kindly man. Inwardly he must have been cold, calculating and cruel.”
Nicholas Elliott died in 1994, aged 77. The greatest, strangest spy story in British history was finally over.
A hero’s welcome?
After fleeing Beirut, Philby arrived in Moscow in January 1963. But after the initial excitement of his welcome and debriefing, he had little to occupy him. “He thought he would be made a KGB general, part of the nomenklatura,” says Ben Macintyre. “But that didn’t happen. Soviet policy was that anybody who had betrayed – even for them – was suspect.”
Philby died on 11 May 1988 and was buried with KGB honours, near Moscow. His incredible, deceitful life was over. Finally, there was no one he could betray.
Aftermath
The Philby affair sent shockwaves through the British and US intelligence agencies. The atmosphere of easy cooperation was replaced by suspicion and distrust.
Another casualty was James Angleton. Always prone to paranoia, he vanished into an interior maze of exotic conspiracy theories. If MI6 had been so completely penetrated, who was to say the CIA hadn’t? Forced out in 1974, he spent his retirement tending his orchids, before his death in 1987.
James Angleton, the CIA chief who had fallen for Philby's charms, never recovered from the fallout after the Spy Ring was exposed
the aftermath
A RUINED LIFE?
a hero's welcome?
Philby pottered about his Moscow flat, reading The Times and listening to the World Service, deeply attached to the country he had betrayed
The Spy Ring scandal dogged Elliott for the rest of his life: many suspected he had allowed Philby to escape to spare MI6 the embarrassment of a trial
“I have
no regrets whatsoever about the past. Just the mistakes I made doing it.’
Kim Philby
“I once looked up to you, Kim. My God, how I despise you now. I hope you've enough decency left to understand why.”
Nicholas Elliot
Ben Macintyre deciphers the key revelations in Philby’s 1963 confession to Elliott
Lizzy came home one evening . . .
The Admiral’s Glass
A suspicious Elliott follows Philby to this pub where he meets up with a mysterious woman, putting his tailing expertise to good use
“Alice ‘Litzi’ Kohlman was the first love of Philby’s life. She was a fully committed revolutionary and an extraordinary woman, glamorous, brave. She’s one of the key, sometimes overlooked, characters in this story.”
The man described himself as ‘Otto’...
“Philby had done a little tradecraft in Vienna. But here Arnold Deutsch is laying it on with a trowel. Spycraft 101 is making your agent feel important, part of an elite clandestine world with all these secret rituals. How exciting is that when you’re 25?”
The regular drill consisted of…
“‘Chicken feed’ describes information doesn’t contain anything of real value. Philby produces two names MI5 knows already: Burgess and Maclean. He doesn’t mention Blunt. The others have been in the frame at some point, and will tie them up while he plots his next move. It's a brilliant confection of truth, half-truth and red-herring.”
The list included…
Elliott was smitten the moment he met Philby. “He had an ability to inspire loyalty and affection. He was... instinctively liked,” he recalled later. But Elliott also had a secret vulnerability. Since Eton, Elliott and Basil Fisher had shared that kind of intense friendship, bordering on romance, public schoolboys sometimes enjoyed. Then, in 1940, tragedy struck. Fisher, a fighter pilot, engaged with German planes over Southern England. His aircraft was hit, and his parachute engulfed in flames.
Just weeks later, Elliott met Philby, who effortlessly slid into his life, a welcome balm to his grief. “Elliott didn't make friends easily – he used jokes and cricket to keep the world at bay,” says Macintyre. “Philby penetrated that. Elliott quickly transferred his love for Fisher to Philby. And Philby would have no compunction about exploiting this.”
An easy target?
Almost everyone who met Philby was drawn to him. Bright, extroverted and helpful – always available for a drink, to listen to your office frustrations. This potent mix fuelled his rise through the ranks of MI6. As historian Hugh Trevor-Roper said: “He was an exceptional person… intelligent, sophisticated, even real.”
Laser-like charm. A ruthlessly cold, manipulative core. It’s difficult not to think of Philby as a sociopath. So was his motivation as much psychological as it was political? “My understanding of sociopathy is there is a sort of feelingless-ness to it,” says Ben Macintyre. “With Philby, I think it was more sinister than that. He was addicted to secrets. Secrets are a kind of drug, very toxic but highly addictive. They sustained him the way a drug addict is sustained by heroin.”
Charming to a fault
Words: Adam Smith
Editor: Laura MacBeth
Designer: Zimi Unzueta
Project Manager: Lauren Sandiford
Images: Getty Images, Shutterstock, Alamy
Produced by Independent Ignite
Partner content
The death of Elliott's closest friend Basil Fisher made him vulnerable to Philby's attentions
Of his duplicitous nature, Philby said "I am really two people... a private person and a political person.
Of course, if there is a conflict, the political person comes first."
The costumes in A Spy Among Friends were meticulously researched using period photos and newspapers, and are often original pieces, or have been recreated exactly. Here are some of the key items Elliott and Philby wear on screen…
Dressed to kill
The shoes
The Homburg hat
The umbrella
The suit
Famously worn by Churchill during WW2, homburg hats are synonymous with spy style. Philby’s own homburg went on sale at Sotheby’s in 1994.
As author John Le Carré recalled, Elliott was a fan of an “immaculately cut, dark, three-piece suit” while Philby favoured
a pinstripe and a belted mac.
In Russia, Philby spots a man wearing quality English shoes and gets jumpy. As his KGB minder jokes,
“The only men in Russia not wearing English shoes are English spies.”
With all their outdoor tailing and surveillance, a good umbrella was a spy essential. Philby gifts one to Elliott as a thank you for defending him when MI5 suspects he's a mole.
CLICK ON THE ARROWS TO READ MORE
A MEETING OF MINDS at MI6
The details of Philby and Elliott’s first meeting are lost to history. Perhaps it was in the bar nestled deep within the MI6 building. Both enjoyed pink gin, cricket and dirty jokes. “They spoke the same language,” Elliott’s son, Mark, revealed. “Kim was as close a friend as my father had.” However, it was a friendship based on a monumental deception.
4 key spy techniques used by the agents in A Spy Among Friends
A SPY UNMASKED
DECADES OF DECEIT
A FRIEND BETRAYED
STREAM ALL SIX EPISODES FREE ON ITVX NOW
PARTNER CONTENT
When they met at MI6 in 1940, it was unsurprising that Kim Philby and Nicholas Elliott became such fast friends. Their backgrounds were strikingly similar; both had attended top public schools – Elliott at Eton and Philby at Westminster. Both went on to study at Trinity College, Cambridge, with Philby graduating in 1933, the year Elliott arrived.
They were establishment men, children of Empire, 'good chaps' and the beneficiaries of an old boy network that stretched from the ‘right’ schools through the leafy quads of Oxbridge up to the highest echelons of British Intelligence. And the currency of this network was a quiet word in the ear, an assurance that, whoever it was, they were ‘one of us’.
“Because I had been born into the British governing class, because I knew a lot of people of an influential standing, I knew that they would never get too tough with me,” Philby admitted later.
In 1934 Philby met a man called ‘Otto’ in Regents Park – he was a recruiter for Soviet intelligence
At Cambridge, Philby met Donald Mclean and Anthony Burgess who would later become part of the Spy Ring
After witnessing the shocking militaristic display at Hitler’s birthday celebrations in 1939, Elliott joined MI6
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PARTNER CONTENT
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As Philby later said:
“Every evening I left the office with a big briefcase full of reports which I had written myself, full of files taken out of the actual documents, out of the actual archives,” Philby recalled later.
Recruited by Russia
“Here, a young Philby is being manipulated by a very bright older man. 'Otto' engages him in high-level political and cultural conversation – I think there might be a bit of a father-figure thing going on. Philby’s father was a domineering man, famed for holding grudges. 'Otto' might be the father Philby wanted.”
... a person with my capabilities...
Ben Macintyre, Author of A Spy Among Friends
“The fatal conceit of most spies is to believe they are loved, in a relationship between equals, and not merely manipulated.”
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"I was to hand them to my Soviet contact in the evening. The next morning I would get the file back, the contents having been photographed, take them back early... and put the files back in their place. That I did regularly, year in, year out.”
The Russians couldn’t believe their luck. In fact, for a while, they didn’t. Poring over the documents in Moscow, they became convinced Philby must be a triple agent. How could MI6 allow such a betrayal, right under their noses?
But over time Philby’s loyalties became clear. In 1943 Elliott triumphantly supervised the defection of a young German agent Eric Vermehren, who had information on the Catholic Underground, an organisation opposed to both Hitler and Stalin. The list of names Elliott trustingly shared with Philby were immediately handed over to the KGB. Later on, as the Russians advanced through Germany, hundreds, possibly thousands of Catholics were shot.
Philby also upended ‘Operation Valuable’ – an attempt by the CIA and MI6 to infiltrate Albania (then under the rule of communist dictator Enver Hoxha) with counterrevolutionary forces. Philby both masterminded and oversaw the operation, keeping the KGB informed throughout. To the bafflement of the intelligence agencies, and despite repeated attempts, almost all the men sent on the mission were captured and shot. Including their families, and those identified as collaborators, the death toll may have been in the thousands.