In the annals of espionage, one name towers above all
others: that of H.A.R. “Kim” Philby, the ringleader of the
legendary Cambridge spies. A member of the British
establishment, Philby joined the Secret Intelligence Service
in 1940, rose to the head of Soviet counterintelligence,
and, as MI6’s liaison with the CIA and the FBI, betrayed
every secret of Allied operations to the Russians, fatally
compromising covert actions to roll back the Iron Curtain in
the early years of the Cold War.nnWritten from Moscow in
1967, My Silent War shook the world and introduced a new
archetype in fiction: the unrepentant spy. It inspired John
le Carré’s Smiley novels and the later espionage novels of
Graham Greene. Kim Philby was history’s most successful spy.
He was also an exceptional writer who gave us the great
iconic story of the Cold War and revolutionized, in the
process, the art of espionage writing.