After re-reading Le Carré's Smiley canon last year, I was left wanting to know more about the real Kim Philby, the man who inspired the Bill Hayden character in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. When I selected this book to fill in that background, I had no idea it had been a huge best seller, was on the annual top books lists for the NYT and the WP, and that it was currently being made into a 6 part television series. I can now say that it is worthy of all that attention.Initially I knew no more ab...

For Americans, the name "Benedict Arnold" is synonymous with traitor. (Arnold was an officer in the Continental Army with a distinguished combat record during the American War of Independence who later changed sides and fought with the British.) Taken in the larger context of the Cold War, the same can be said for Harold Adrian Russell Philby - aka Kim Philby. Philby was one of those men of Britain's interwar generation hailing from a privileged class who, upon graduating from Oxford or Cambridg...

This is labelled as a bestseller but I struggled to really get into it. The first half of the book is so full of names and details about each person mentioned that it was hard to keep track of what was going on. It felt disjointed and it wasn't easy to see how all the facts and people hung together. There was too much information about some seemingly irrelevant figures that confused the main story. In short, it wasn't especially readable and I nearly gave up.I'm glad I finished it as the second

Like so many students, Philby confused communism with a great levelling, an equality among men. So when recruited at 18 by MI6, he sees it as his opportunity to give Russia a helping hand. To be a spy in Britain at that time, you had to be from a certain background, with the essential confidence of being at the top of the social tree. This is what enabled him to get away with, quite literally, murder, for years. One doesn't question one's friends does one? They are all such decent chaps! Like fu...

This took me forever to read because I found it super stressful. I just don’t know how you could lie to everyone who cared about you for, like, thirty years though since most of the Cambridge spies appear to have raging alcoholics perhaps it did take its toll.Anyway, this was deeply fascinating to me. Firstly, it’s just amazingly written, balancing what is clearly a fuck tonne of legit research with a genuine storytelling flair. And secondly, as you can tell from the title, it approaches the eni...

An outstanding read. It is so difficult to believe that Kim Philby got away with his lies and multiple lives for so long, but there it is, he did. It is tempting to admire his skills, except when remembering how many hundreds of others died as a result of those skills, and how many lives of wives and friends were also ruined by him. It is frightening to think that both British and US intelligence were so taken in, and to consider the possibility that other moles are at work today on both sides o...

How amused and flattered the infamous British traitor Kim Philby would be to discover he is again the subject of fascinated scrutiny in his home country and in America fifty years after his defection to Moscow. Ben MacIntyre has managed to reignite interest in Philby by presenting the most rounded and detailed picture yet of this uniquely talented and duplicitous man with the use of newly declassified material from MI6 files. Kim Philby rose within the ranks of British Intelligence and gave secr...

(for a more in-depth look at what I think about this book, feel free to journey on over to the nonfiction section of my online reading journal). I'll post my review of this book here because LibraryThing and the publishers sent me this edition, but I have to make a sort of embarrassing confession: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the publisher, but couldn't get started on it right away so I set it aside to be picked up later. When I was ready to read it, which was like 2 wee...

I have read several of Ben Macintyre's books recently and have become convinced he is the go to author on all things related to the history of British Intelligence and Special Operations. In this narrative he tells the story of one of if not the highest Soviet double agent in MI6's history, Kim Philby.The author traces Philby's career from his initial political dissatisfaction of the British upper crust life while a student at Cambridge University through to his defection in 1963. He along with

The #1 lesson in spycraft? Never trust anyone. Ever. Never. Not only is this an in-depth chronicle of the Philby spy scandal in Britain, but it also documents the development of the espionage agencies in Britain and the United States before WWII. The recruitment of British spies early on was based on a flimsy background check, personality traits and, more importantly, whether or not the subject belonged to the inner circle of British privilege, aristocracy, and the good ol’ boy network. Kim Phil...

I read A Spy Amongst Friends by Ben Macintyre all the way through to the last page of the bibliography. Actually, I read the two pages after that. It's what you do when you can't bear for the story to end. And I already knew the end of this story, but I knew just enough to not know much at all. Really excellent book. Writing non-fiction which has more dazzle and suspense than any novel is a gift. To do it over and over as Mr. Macintyre has done is just pure talent. I researched James Jesus Angle...

I wasn't even half-way into this book when I knew it was going to be a 5 star read. The author's fluid writing style could make a book about house cleaning compelling! The story of the Cambridge "old school ties" group of brilliant and charming young men who were the shining lights of British Intelligence during the Cold War is in a word....fantastic. They were led by Kim Philby who rose to head Britain's counterintelligence against the Soviet Union when in fact he and they were deeply imbedded

Just fascinating!I listened to the audiobook and was completely hooked from start to finish. How Kim Philby was able to fool all his friends, family, MI6, and the CIA is amazingly depicted in this nonfiction account. His betrayal for many years as a double agent for the KGB took everyone by shocking surprise. Wonderfully told was the intricately weaved story of the Cambridge 5. A spy ring of British upper class students graduating to MI6 and then turning to the KGB under the misunderstood ideali...

What a fascinating subject! This was the first book I've read about a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring, and it was so interesting I plan to read more. Kim Philby worked for British intelligence, but he was secretly sending information to Russia. He defected to the Soviet Union in 1963. (Fun fact: Philby's betrayal inspired some of the novels by John Le Carré.) In this book, Macintyre focuses on Philby's longtime friendship with another British intelligence officer, Nicholas Elliott. We lear...

In 2018, thirty years after Kim Philby's death, a small and uninteresting square was named after him. The mayor of Moscow formally named the area in November of that year thus keeping, if only faintly and in rather a dull Soviet way, Philby's name alive in his adopted home of latter years. How Philby came to be a citizen of the USSR (now Russia) living in a uninspiring flat on 500 rubles a month with visitors and movements controlled and monitored is well described in Ben Macintyre's very readab...

Unpopular opinion time: This book is one of the most boring books I’ve ever read. I’m including textbooks that I’ve read and reviewed when I say this too.It pains me to give this book such a low rating because 1) I was recommended this book by my friend Christian and 2) I knew about the subject matter and was interested in learning more. This book is just written in a way that makes it so hard to get into; it wasn’t until about halfway into the book that I got interested yet I still found my int...

Superlative! Difficult read, complex and astonishing lives. This book and author has put me into what I'm going to call my Covert Phase of reading. Once I read almost nothing but Russians for a year, and wonder if that is going to happen with another genre so many decades later. And I didn't even see it coming. This stuff is outstanding non-fiction. And also reveals far more historical perception and actions than most current publication, most of which are 75% spin and slant. This method is supe...

A Spy Among Friends was a New York Times Bestseller, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book, an Amazon Best Book of the Year, a Washington Post Notable Book, and Entertainment Weekly’s Best Spy Book of 2014. It definitely deserves all the accolades it has received!Kim Philby was a member of Britain’s upper crust. His father was an advisor to Ibn Saud, the first monarch of Saudi Arabia. His mother came from an upper crust family as well. Kim was handsome and intelligent. He had impeccable mann...

This reads like a novel. Yes, there are some factual errors. Yes, some of the dialog must have been invented. But, it's stunningly good.

Ben Macintyre is a great writer and, in this latest book, he has turned his attention to Kim Philby – one of the Cambridge Spies. Historically, this book may not offer much that is new, but it does tell the story from a different viewpoint ; that of his friendships, most notably with Nicholas Elliott. In other words, this is not really a straight-forward biography of Philby, but focuses on his personality and on the Old Boy network that enabled him to evade detection for so long. The book begins...