Eleanor Philby: Kim Philby, The Spy I Loved. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1968. 175 pp, ill.
Eleanor Philby initially believed her marriage to Kim Philby was “perfect in every way” (pg. viii). And it continued to seem so during their years together in Beirut in the late ’50s and early ’60s. So what led to their eventual break up? First came the shock of his unexpected disappearance, when she suspected she might have been the victim of some kind of confidence trick. Many years later, though, when the relationship was irretrievably broken, she came to see the primary cause of its failure in their prolonged separation, when the Johnson administration refused to return her passport until after the 1963 election was safely over. And indeed it was during this absence that Kim became involved with the wife of his fellow spy Donald Maclean.
Other contributing factors, though, should not be overlooked. In Beirut they had enjoyed a traditional marriage: He was the breadwinner, she raised the children. Each helped the other. When he went off to meet with his Soviet contacts, he was careful to keep her in the dark. In Moscow, on the other hand, she was something of a drag on him, never learning Russian, unable to drive a car or pursue her own career. There were no children around for her to take care of (they had been sent back to the US and UK to stay with relatives). Try as she might, they could never fully recapture the magic of Beirut.
Even during her first visit to Moscow, she noted that “a sea of sadness … lay beneath the surface of his life.” (pg. 89) When her husband conferred now with his handlers, she was more aware of being shut out. After their long separation finally ended in 1963, her reaction upon returning to the USSR is telling: “I was back with a jolt in a world of shadowy outlines, unexplained depressions and mysterious anxieties.” (pg. 155) On top of all that, she suffered from a botched surgery in a Moscow hospital, from which she never fully recovered.
Ultimately the greatest hurdle was that the man the spy-bride had first fallen in love with in Beirut turned out not to be who she thought he was. According to her testimony, before his sudden disappearance she was totally ignorant of his espionage activity, and so when he vanished without warning and the British subsequently confronted her with irrefutable evidence, it all came as a shock. A vital element of trust had been broken, and later developments, above all Kim’s affair with Melinda Maclean, did nothing to restore it. Looking back after her final departure from Moscow, she speculated that he now may be in “a different, more commonplace, relationship” – a not-so-subtle dig at Melinda.
She describes the hardships of getting by in the Soviet capital at that time: “I found life in the street and shops of the city not very gay. Russians, and particularly the unusually large, sturdy women who served in shops and cleaned the streets, never smiled. The always-crowded Metro was also run by women. It was immaculate, lavishly-decorated and more efficient than any Metro I have ever been on. The crowds on the avenues and in the stores seemed grim-faced and forbidding. But I saw no beggars. Everyone was adequately dressed for the climate and no one seemed under-fed. It seemed to me that the whole population of the city spent most of its time travelling on the Metro or walking the streets looking for things to buy. One was pushed around a good deal. Ordinary courtesies were lacking. I was seldom offered a seat on the Metro but I was impressed by the attention given to women with children. Almost everyone carried brief cases or shopping bags and, on entering the trains, immediately began reading.” (pg. 97) She characterizes the general atmosphere as one of “utilitarian dinginess.” (pg. 104f)
But it is her inside, close-up view of Kim Philby that will attract most readers’ attention. “I also reported to him what the British Intelligence Chief had said to me in London…. that he had definitely known for 7 years that Kim was working without pay for the Russians. This seemed to interest Kim intensely. He made me repeat it several times, looking very serious and reflective. Somehow this disclosure seemed to disturb him deeply.” He was likely trying to puzzle out whether she had been fed disinformation or not.
Eleanor provides many intriguing little vignettes that an outsider would never otherwise be privy to. She mentions, for example, his personal sign of the fish, a symbol he often drew at the end of his letters. When described in such general terms, it sounds like a mere flourish, something without any further significance. But a few pages later she prints an illustration of it which may be revealing. Looking closely, one sees that there are three fish carefully laid out in a circle, such that the head of each is covering the tail of another. (pg. 61) Each member of the self-contained group, in other words, is partially exposed, and at the same time partially protecting another member – an appropriate symbol for a spy cell.
A few names that could not be revealed when the book was published back in 1967 can be filled in on the basis of sources that have subsequently become available: X = Peter Lunn; Y = Nicholas Elliott; Y’s chief in London = Dick White. She is quite right in saying, by the way, that Elliott’s conviction of Philby’s trustworthiness was a major factor in getting him “readmitted into the confidence of British Intelligence,” (pg. 51) – something Elliott would come greatly to regret.
The unnamed Americans who gave a party the day of Philby’s departure from Beirut are Miles and Lorraine Copeland (pg. 8); Miles went on to have a long career in the CIA, mostly in the Middle East. The tall, thick-necked, blue-eyed Russian man who introduced himself as the Far Eastern correspondent of a German news agency is probably Petukhov. (pg. 22) The Reuters man who buttonholed Philby in the Ukraina Hotel in Eleanor’s absence is probably John Miller (pg. 162) – a similar incident is mentioned in Miller’s All Them Cornfields and Ballet in the Evening (pg. 120), where to be sure he gives a version that differs in significant details, saying the encounter with Philby, Melinda Maclean and another woman, who he suspected was Eleanor, took place not in the Ukraina but in the Baku restaurant on Gorky Street. Perhaps these diverging stories can be reconciled if we assume the other woman in Miller’s memoir was not Eleanor Philby after all, but Melinda Maclean’s sister (and that Miller was confused about the address).
The book’s co-author (ghost writer?) Patrick Seale failed to catch some careless errors. Archie Johnstone, “a disillusioned Scotsman… who had run a newspaper, British Ally, in Moscow during the war…” appears here as Archie “Johnson.” (pg. 161) Aragvi, Moscow’s most famous Georgian restaurant, is characterized as “Ukrainian.”
Incidentally, Seale’s book: Philby: The Long Road to Moscow (1973) was translated into Russian the same year it came out in the West. And the introduction to Philby’s autobiography My Silent War in East German translation has an Introduction by someone identified only as “O. Kedrow,” evidently a Russian. While he characterizes Seale as being by no means well-disposed towards the Soviet Union, he points out that his 1973 biography explains Philby’s decision to become a spy by referring to the “traitorous policy” of the British Labour party. This is the only context in which Kedrow refers to traitors.
One don’t have to read far to discover that this book is an obvious (though uncredited) source for the Sharon Stone/Rupert Everett movie “A Different Loyalty” (2005) – the Introduction alone makes this abundantly clear. Somewhat later, Eleanor puts a question to Kim in Moscow: “What is more important in your life, me and the children or the Communist Party?” To which he answered firmly and without a moment’s hesitation: “The Party, of course.” (pg. 78) In “A Different Loyalty,” this is transformed into the movie’s dramatic climax, as Sharon Stone pulls open her blouse and demands to know, “What’s more important – these or the Communist Party?” Philby’s response remains the same.
Finally, the original UK title, The Spy I Loved, contained an obvious nod to Ian Fleming’s The Spy Who Loved Me.
For the American edition, this was changed for some reason to The Spy I Married.
For related reviews at this site, see: Kim Philby: My Silent War; Rufina Philby: The Private Life of Kim Philby; Robert Littell: Young Philby; Ben Macintyre: A Spy Among Friends; Genrikh Borovik: The Philby Files; John Miller: All Them Cornfields and Ballet in the Evening; “A Different Loyalty” with Sharon Stone (2004)
See also the review at the site: https://www.existentialennui.com/2011/05/kim-philby-spy-i-loved-by-eleanor.html
Update
Eleanor Philby’s book was included in a review of books about Kim Philby written by “Christopher Felix” (real name: James McCarger) that appeared in the NY Times, May 26, 1968. He points out that this book “appeared originally in serial form last October, in The Observer, as that paper’s riposte to The Sunday Times’s more sensational revelations about Philby and the British, and, to a lesser extent, the American secret services. Except for occasional glimpses, the book is not concerned with the arcana of secret operations. Nevertheless, it is the only authoritative source we have for a detailed view of Philby in Moscow, and it gives us a unique insight into a neglected, but surely significant, aspect of his character. [….] What we are shown is a sentimental facade, resistible by few women, which is one day transferred – intact, and seemingly without any intervening reconstruction – to another site. […] The hypothesis that emerges from all this is of a man compelled to deception.”
I would note that it was not only women who found Philby’s facade irresistible.
© Hamilton Beck
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