Spy story

Like spy, like son: How father of double MI6 agent Kim Philby became tangled up in espionage and betrayal HIMSELF as part of a middle-east propaganda war

Kim Philby’s father, a Saudi adviser, was also involved in intelligence and betrayal after being exploited by MI6 to win a propaganda war in the Middle East.

One of the most notorious double-agents, Kim Philby gave secrets to Russia while working for the British secret service and was part of the Cambridge spy ring discovered in 1963.

And a new book has now revealed that his father St John Philby also unwittingly became part of the intelligence force.

The former civil servant, who fell out of favour with the Saudi Arabia monarch, Saud in 1955, after working as an adviser for his predecessor Ibn Saud in the 1920s, was set up by spy John Slade-Baker to unknowingly betray the country.

Philby was expelled from Riyadh and fled to Beirut where he encountered Slade-Baker, a Sunday Times reporter and also MI6 spy.