Spy story

Kim Philby: The spy and the video that can't be trusted

It's safe to assume, however, that this essay, by the man who once mentored KGB recruits, is not required reading amongst members of today's FSB - otherwise known as the old KGB. Strictly speaking, another agency, the SVR, is in charge of foreign spies, although when it comes to confessions in Vladimir Putin's Russia, both agencies are bound to be on the same page, so to speak.

When Nicholas Elliott cornered him in Beirut, Philby didn't exactly crumble. What he did, was to partlyconfess to treachery.

It was only half a confession, as two British authors have pointed out. Gordon Corera, who wrote The Art of Betrayal: Life and Death in the British Secret Service (2011), is one; the other is Ben Macintyre, whose book, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal (2014), describes that "confession" in more detail. It was, says Macintyre, "a peculiar confection of truth, half truth and lies."

Ditto Philby's lectures to the KGB, and the Stasi?

It might do well to remember, perhaps, what Philby's Russian handler, Yuri Modin, once wrote about Britain's most notorious double agent. "In the end I suspect that Philby made a mockery of everyone, particularly ourselves."