Kim Philby’s library

Kim Philby was the only man in history to have been made both an Officer of the Order of the British Empire and a Hero of the Soviet Union. After his defection to Moscow in 1963, aged 51, he admitted missing some friends, some condiments (Colman’s mustard and Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce) and English cricket — though he continued avidly to follow the scores.

He was also a keen reader, though access to books in English through the British Council and USIS libraries in Moscow was denied him. Instead — and unusually — he was able to order books through the post and to pay for them with American dollars sent via a Russian bank. I recently found seven typed letters, addressed from Postbox 509, Main Post Office, Moscow, and signed H.A.R. Philby. Written between 22 August 1984 and 11 January 1987 to Bowes & Bowes booksellers in Cambridge, they provide a fascinating insight into his literary tastes.

As one might expect, he was a keen follower of John le Carré (the pseudonym of David Cornwell) and Graham Greene, both of whom had served in Intelligence, but whose views on him were diametrically opposed. Philby wrote to Phillip Knightley: ‘I have ordered The Honourable Schoolboy. From le Carré’s introduction to your book [Philby: The Spy Who Betrayed a Generation], I get the vague impression, perhaps wrongly, that he didn’t like me.’ When Knightley tried to make light of le Carré’s hostility, Philby replied:

Smiley rides again, a little wearily, perhaps, but that is natural for a contemporary of mine. You write that Cornwell’s attitude to me is neutral. Maybe he is a mite schizophrenic.

In fact le Carré had expressed his intense antagonism. He called Philby ‘spiteful, vain and murderous’, and wrote that he

gave himself body and mind to a country he had never visited, to an ideology he had not deeply studied, to a regime which even abroad, during those long and awful purges, was a peril to serve; he remained actively faithful to that decision for over 30 years, cheating, betraying and occasionally killing.