Queer Places:
University Of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2, Regno Unito
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 1912 – 11 May 1988[1])
was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a double agent
before defecting to the Soviet Union in 1963. He served as both an NKVD and
KGB operative.[2]
In 1963, Philby was revealed to be a member of the spy ring now known as the Cambridge Five, the other members of which were Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and, possibly, John Cairncross or Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been most successful in providing secret information to the Soviet Union. His activities were moderated only by Joseph Stalin's fears that he was a triple agent providing Soviet intelligence to British authorities.[3] Philby was an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) from 1946 to 1965, and he was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1965.
n February 1934, Philby married Litzi Friedmann, an Austrian communist whom he had met in Vienna. They subsequently moved to Britain; however, as Philby assumed the role of a fascist sympathiser, they separated. Litzi lived in Paris before returning to London for the duration of the war; she ultimately settled in East Germany.[70]
While working as a correspondent in Spain, Philby began an affair with Frances Doble, Lady Lindsay-Hogg, an actress and aristocratic divorcée who was an admirer of Franco and Hitler. They travelled together in Spain through August 1939.[71]
In 1940 he began living with Aileen Furse in London. Their first three children, Josephine, John and Tommy Philby, were born between 1941 and 1944. In 1946, Philby finally arranged a formal divorce from Litzi. He and Aileen were married on 25 September 1946, while Aileen was pregnant with their fourth child, Miranda. Their fifth child, Harry George, was born in 1950.[72] Aileen suffered from psychiatric problems, which grew more severe during the period of poverty and suspicion following the flight of Burgess and Maclean. She lived separately from Philby, settling with their children in Crowborough while he lived first in London and later in Beirut. Weakened by alcoholism and frequent sickness, she died of influenza in December 1957.[73]
In 1956, Philby began an affair with Eleanor Brewer, the wife of New York Times correspondent Sam Pope Brewer. Following Eleanor's divorce, the two married[46] in January 1959. After Philby defected to the Soviet Union in 1963, Eleanor visited him in Moscow. In November 1964, after a visit to the United States, she returned, intending to settle permanently. In her absence, Philby had begun an affair with Donald Maclean's wife, Melinda.[46] He and Eleanor divorced and she departed Moscow in May 1965.[74] Melinda left Maclean and briefly lived with Philby in Moscow. In 1968 she returned to Maclean.
In 1971, Philby married Rufina Ivanovna Pukhova, a Russo-Polish woman twenty years his junior, with whom he lived until his death in 1988.[75]
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