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Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
August 2014
On Sale: July 29, 2014
384 pages ISBN: 0804136637 EAN: 9780804136631 Kindle: B00I7696IG Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Biography
Master storyteller Ben Macintyre's most ambitious work to
date brings to life the twentieth century's greatest spy
story. Kim Philby was the greatest spy in history, a brilliant and
charming man who rose to head Britain's counterintelligence
against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold
War—while he was secretly working for the enemy. And
nobody thought he knew Philby like Nicholas Elliott,
Philby's best friend and fellow officer in MI6. The two men
had gone to the same schools, belonged to the same exclusive
clubs, grown close through the crucible of wartime
intelligence work and long nights of drink and revelry. It
was madness for one to think the other might be a communist
spy, bent on subverting Western values and the power of the
free world. But Philby was secretly betraying his friend. Every word
Elliott breathed to Philby was transmitted back to
Moscow—and not just Elliott's words, for in America,
Philby had made another powerful friend: James Jesus
Angleton, the crafty, paranoid head of CIA
counterintelligence. Angleton's and Elliott's unwitting
disclosures helped Philby sink almost every important
Anglo-American spy operation for twenty years, leading
countless operatives to their doom. Even as the web of
suspicion closed around him, and Philby was driven to
greater lies to protect his cover, his two friends never
abandoned him—until it was too late. The stunning
truth of his betrayal would have devastating consequences on
the two men who thought they knew him best, and on the
intelligence services he left crippled in his wake. Told with heart-pounding suspense and keen psychological
insight, and based on personal papers and never-before-seen
British intelligence files, A Spy Among Friends is
Ben Macintyre's best book yet, a high-water mark in Cold War
history telling.
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