HOME LIFE OF A SPY

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31653, 13 April 1968, Page 4

HOME LIFE OF A SPY

Kim Philby. By Eleanor Philby. Hamish Hamilton. 175 pp.

A rather melodramatic subtitle “The Spy I Loved" sets he tone of a book which, laturally enough, is chiefly concerned with human emotions, though it also poses i baffling problem of human personality. Harold Philby, a lifted journalist with access to Western diplomatic secrets, and with Foreign Office connections, disappeared suddenly in 1963 from Beirut, where he was acting as foreign correspondent to a well-known English journal. He and his American wife Eleanor had been leading a pleasant social life, though at times Philby would indulge in heavy drinking bouts. These did not diminish his very real love for her, which was demonstrated in such sentimental ways as the celebration of anniversaries and love-letters, when they were apart, of an almost schoolboyish exuberance. Yet this man had been a dedicated Soviet agent for 30 years, had betrayed British friends and colleagues as well as his country’s secrets, and, despite a natural bent for conviviality, put himself under the perpetual strain of being found out and convicted of the most unforgivable of human crimes—treason.

During a bitter three years which followed Philby’s exposure his wife was to suffer vicariously for his actions. A loyal American, Eleanor Phil-

by found herself under suspicion of collusion with her husband, of whose work she was totally ignorant. She was dazedly unable to understand why a devoted husband and a loving father (he had had five children by a previous marriage) could bring chaos and social obloquy into the lives of those nearest to him. Nevertheless, she decided to join him in Moscow to which he had fled and where he was evidently much esteemed by his Russian employers.

In Moscow their friends were restricted to a tiny circle of ’ expatriates—chiefly Donald Maclean and his wife Melinda—and they had no Russian friends, while the British Embassy circle of course ignored them. Eleanor Philby bore with this twilight existence without complaint, but a desire to see her daughter (by her former marriage) in America led her to apply to return home for a while.

In America she found herself even more suspect than she had been in England (to which she had taken Philby’s children from Beirut), and it was five months before she was given a clearance to return to Moscow. Having, during that time, received passion-ately-devoted, letters from her husband, she was dismayed to find a change in his manner on her arrival, and it was not long before she realised that he was involved in an affair with Mrs Maclean. This then is the main theme

of her story, but aside from its emotional overtones it evokes speculation concerning the darker recesses of the human mind. Philby disclosed nothing of his philosophy to his wife, except to say that a traumatic experience in Vienna in 1934, when he saw workers shot down like dogs, was the starting point of his identification with Communist ideology. Yet though he spent many hours daily in Moscow conferring with Russian colleagues he displayed no real interest in the ordinary people, and, like Guy Burgess (who died just before the Philbys’ arrival), seemed deprived of intellectual stimuli which meant so much to him.

Dreary games of bridge or scrabble with the Macleans—who were not at that time kindred spirits—were the only outlet for the Philbys’ social instincts for two whole years. The hopeless dichotomy in the mind of a man torn between warm human affections and utter dedication to a cold and alien political theory simply cannot be explained in terms that could be understood by ordinary minds, and it is small wonder that when Eleanor left him Philby should have been on the way to becoming an alcoholic. Even so it seems inexplicable that he should have deliberately exposed a woman he certainly loved to a harsh and undeserved fate.