A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre (Crown)

A Spy Among Friends is a great book to listen to (the reader is John Lee); it’s the story of the famous “third man,” Cold War era spy Kim Philby, who, along with Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess (and several others), were Soviet spies in the British intelligence system, working in MI5, MI6, or the foreign service. Philby, who became a Communist at Cambridge, never wavered in his faith in Communism from the 1930s to his death in Moscow in 1988 after his defection.

Philby served in high positions in MI6 and was for a while chief intelligence officer in the British Embassy in Washington, DC where he maintained a close friendship with James Angleton of the CIA. Although Maclean and Burgess defected in the 1951 and the British intelligence service knew there were additional double agents, Philby’s treachery wasn’t discovered until 1962. Philby had the right background, attended the right schools, had the right connections; everyone vouched for him automatically. For decades he passed details of British intelligence operations to his Soviet contacts. A huge black mark for the British intelligence community.