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A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal Hardcover – July 29, 2014

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Ben Macintyre (Author)
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Ben Macintyre (Author), John le Carré (Afterword)
4.6 out of 5 stars 807 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (July 29, 2014)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0804136637
  • ISBN-13: 978-0804136631
  • Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.4 x 9.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (807 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #34,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA Spy Among Friends
By S Riaz TOP 500 REVIEWER on March 16, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition
Ben Macintyre is a great writer and, in this latest book, he has turned his attention to Kim Philby – one of the Cambridge Spies. Historically, this book may not offer much that is new, but it does tell the story from a different viewpoint ; that of his friendships, most notably with Nicholas Elliott. In other words, this is not really a straight-forward biography of Philby, but focuses on his personality and on the Old Boy network that enabled him to evade detection for so long. The book begins with the meeting between Philby and Elliott in Beirut in January, 1963, with Elliott confronting his former friend about his betrayal of his country and trying to obtain a confession. He must certainly have felt betrayed personally too, as he had done much to protect Philby from earlier suspicions by MI5 – defending and helping him when he was in difficulty.

This fascinating account looks at the early life of both men, their meeting during WWII and their career in the Secret Intelligence Service. Kim Philby was, from the beginning, a Soviet agent. Along with the Cambridge Spies; Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross, he was so successful that his Soviet spymasters suspected him of being a double agent. As well as being a close friend of Elliott, he also became the mentor of James Jesus Angleton, an American and one of the most powerful spies in history. The Old Boy network which had brought both Elliott and Philby into the intelligence service meant that while agents were secretive outside of their immediate circle, they were horribly indiscreet within it, trusting on bonds of class and social networking to protect them.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsA surprising 5 star read
By Chris Thatcher on March 28, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Why surprising? Well it is not the sort of book I would expect to be "unputdownable" but it is.
Kim Philby lives through this book as an enigmatic yet charismatic double agent whose exploits over many years astound.
If you like spy thrillers give this book a try. Ben Macintyre writes great accounts of things that happened but in a way that engages and persuades you to draw in closer. Try his other books too.

My only moan (directed at Amazon not the author) is that if you like to read the notes on each Chapter (as I do) in Kindle this totally messes up the process of tracking your last page read. Something they could no doubt correct but choose not to.
Great book - good read!
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe endless fascination of espionage
By Lady Fancifull on April 22, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition
This is an excellent, readable account of Kim Philby's life, and indeed of the whole culture of espionage from the lead-up to the Second World War, through the war years, and then into the period of the Cold War, when Russia, not Germany, was seen as the enemy by the West, and particularly by the UK and America. Author and journalist Ben Macintyre is clearly fascinated by the subject of espionage as he has written several other factual books on this topic. His research is extensive, and this particular book has a revealing postscript by John le Carre, who of course also worked in the Secret Service.

Macintyre starts his book with that very well known, and also in some ways, given the time of its writing, (1938) that very shocking statement by the novelist E.M.Forster:

"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friends, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country"

What in the end the Forster quote implies is that `country' like ideology itself, can, taken to an extreme, lead to the devaluing of an individual life. The ism elevated above the humans who live within the ism, or believe the ism. Fidelity to the ism (nationalism, specific faith or political ideology ism) can lead to the terrible things that happen when not just the other person's ism, but indeed, the person themselves, becomes expendable for the sake of devotion to MY ism.

The fascinating dichotomy in this book however, became the clash between the `club' - an upper class, public school, Oxbridge educated elite - a friendship of same background, bonded together with heavy drinking, those who were loyal to those friends, and would never betray their friends, and those, like Philby, whose loyalty was to the country of ideology.Read more ›
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2.0 out of 5 starsFun Philby friends fiction
By Aaron C. Brown TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on August 29, 2014
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
This is a patchwork quilt of a book, stitching together the colorful bits from about two dozen popular accounts of the Philby affair. The author has a good ear for light anecdote and there's certainly plenty of dramatic material to mine. The result is an amusing story. Unfortunately it is more fiction than fact. The problem is that the underlying sources, while varying widely in reliability, average about equal amounts of truth and untruth. Picking the colorful bits biases the sample, and combining material uncritically introduces additional error.

A good example is this quote from early in the book:

"The daughter of a Russian-Jewish gold tycoon, Solomon was another exotic bloom in the colorful hothouse of Philby's circle: as a young woman she had had an affair with Aleksandr Kerensky, the Russian prime minister deposed by Lenin in the October Revolution, before going on to marry a British First World War general."

Later in the book, we meet the same woman again:

"Flora Solomon had lived a life that stretched, rather bizarrely, from the Russian Revolution to the British high street: after an early affair with a Bolshevik revolutionary and marriage to a British soldier. . ."

It doesn't seem that the author has merely forgotten that he has already introduced Flora, the descriptions are so different that he perhaps doesn't recognize that she's the same person. Both descriptions are wrong. The affair with Kerensky (who was not a Bolshevik, he belonged to the Trudovik opposition) began when Flora was 32, eight years after she married Harold Solomon. It was a ten-year acknowledged relationship between well-known public figures, not the Monica Lewinsky hanky panky suggested by the word choice.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

a great book!

Published 12 days ago by adelaidecmiller
4.0 out of 5 starsInteresting and well written history of what happened with Philby and...

I was interested in the factual background of Philby and the Cambridge 5. I thought that a recent history would be more accurate especially as secret files opened up. Read more

Published 15 days ago by Johnny Beans
5.0 out of 5 starsLoved this book...

A new look at Philby from a different angle...the angle of a steadfast friend whom he ultimately betrayed. Read more

Published 17 days ago by Mr. Harry
4.0 out of 5 starsReality exceeds Imagination. A real thriller of treacherous persons...

Reality exceeds Imagination. A real thriller of treacherous persons who betrayed their country, their friends and families.

Published 17 days ago by Abraham Oppenheim
5.0 out of 5 starsSmooth Mr. Philby

A really interesting look at the English turned Soviet spy Kim Philby. Well written with not too much spy detail that can sometimes get confusing and boring. Read more

Published 20 days ago by Robert Sparrenberger
5.0 out of 5 starsOutstanding,exciting book

The author provides an excellent review of the espionage wars of the 1930's, 40's, 50's and 60's, with emphasis, of course, on the most notorious of the Soviet spies of the era,... Read more

Published 28 days ago by stanley kallmann
5.0 out of 5 starsHow dumb can the CIA be?

Interesting insight into the cold war and how stupidity by friendly spay agencies let us down.

Published 1 month ago by Bubbles
5.0 out of 5 starsWhat a spy!

A gripping story, well written and amazing because it's true.

Published 1 month ago by Devoted yogi
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat book on spies

Wonderful book on history of spying. Very well written. Gives information not found elsewhere. It is fair in its approach. It doesn't try to make a hero or a villain out of Philly. Read more

Published 1 month ago by david's wife...
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Real Philby

A great read about the most enigmatic double agent of all time

Published 1 month ago by John William Kellett Young

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