The most recommended books on Kim Philby

I loved this book for its engaging story. Spies, particularly the real ones, intrigue me.

Macintyre shapes the story of Kim Philby as a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. His style flows like a river in summertime, a trip through history with a human touch and a fascination for the people of the Cold War.

The book was made into a six-part TV series featuring Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce. I watched it, and then I read the book. I couldn’t get enough of MI6, the CIA, and the KGB who play games of the worst kind, through lies.

Describing any book as the best of its kind is controversial but few writers in any genre can match one of the true literary giants of the 20th century. Greene worked for MI6 in West Africa during the Second World War before coming back to England where he worked alongside Kim Philby countering German spies based in Portugal and Spain. Elements of his sympathy for Philby, a KGB agent at the heart of MI6, are evident in The Human Factor, where MI6 officer Maurice Castle finds himself embroiled in an investigation into leaks to the KGB from within his section. The book reeks of authenticity but it is the brilliance of the writing, ramping up the tension from seemingly mundane incidents, which produces such a riveting thriller. 

If you are looking for a suspenseful non-fiction book on British history that reads like a novel and you won’t want to put down, this is the book for you.

I knew the basic outlines of the story of Kim Philby, a double agent inside Britain’s MI6 secret service spying on behalf of the Soviets. It turns out there is so much more to the story, told in a fascinating way by well-regarded author Macintyre in a book that would defy belief if the author had made up the details of Philby’s story for a novel.

This book will lead you to question how well we can ever really know someone, while also teaching you much about Britain’s involvement in the Cold War and the history of the post-war world.

Kim Philby’s most personal betrayal was not of Nicholas Elliott, as suggested in Ben McIntyre’s A Spy Among Friends , but his school friend and another MI6 colleague Tim Milne , the nephew of Winnie the Pooh author AA Milne, whom he falsely accused of being a spy in order to deflect attention from himself. Milne’s memoirs were finally permitted to be published four years after his death and provide a fascinating and fresh glimpse into both Philby and Burgess especially Milne’s teenage European travels with Philby and his August 1948 visit to Philby in Turkey where he remembered fellow guest Burgess ‘lolling in a window seat, dirty, unshaven, wearing nothing but an inadequately fastened dressing-gown”, singing on jeep rides into the countryside and  diving into the Bosphorus from a second floor balcony.

Tim Powers is best known for his secret histories. Unlike alternate history, a secret history doesn’t change the publicly known facts of the past; instead, it tells a story hidden beneath those facts that may change their meaning.

Powers takes a strict approach to secret history that I admire and try to follow when I can: all the known historical details (who was where and when and what they were doing) must remain the same. His marvelous novel Declare applies this rule to the Kim Philby spy case. Powerful beings that have been dwelling among us provide the hidden motivations for espionage and treason from WWII into the Cold War.

Declare is fun both for its spycraft and occult details.