Guy Burgess, Philby’s problematic lodger: frequently drunk, faintly malodorous and always supremely entertaining.
Kim Philby (left) was appointed the MI6 station chief in Washington in September 1949. Above, the RMS Caronia, the luxury Cunard liner nicknamed the ‘Green Goddess’ on which he sailed to New York. ‘Philby was a great charmer. He came to us with an enormous reputation,’ said one CIA colleague.
James Angleton, poet, orchidenthusiast, CIA chief of counterintelligence and America’s most powerful mole-hunter.
Bill Harvey of CIA counter-intelligence, the former FBI agent and Philby’s most dangerous opponent in the US.
Harvey’s Oyster Salon, the smart Washington restaurant where Philby and Angleton lunched together: ‘Philby picked him clean.’
Enver Hoxha, Albania’s hardline communist ruler.
David de Crespigny Smiley, an aristocratic British Army officer with a legendary taste for derring-do, seen here with Yemeni resistance fighters.
En route to the Albanian coast for the start of ‘Operation Valuable’, one of the most catastrophic secret operations of the Cold War.
The ‘pixies’ prepare for action: three of the four men in this photograph were killed within hours of landing on the Karaburun peninsula.
The Stormie Seas, a forty-three-ton schooner disguised as a pleasure boat, carrying enough munitions to start a small war.
Two typically irreverent cartoons drawn by Guy Burgess in Moscow: Lenin with a chip on his shoulder and a ferocious Stalin declaring: ‘I’m very human!’
The ‘wanted’ poster issued for Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, after the two men fled from Britain in May 1951.
The Evening Standard headline identifying Philby as the Third Man.
Marcus Lipton MP, defender of parliamentary privilege, enemy of pop music and Philby’s primary accuser.
Philby’s second wife, Aileen, besieged by the press in October 1955 at the family home in Crowborough.
Aileen would die inside this house, after Philby’s departure for Beirut, alcoholic and alone.
She made no comment, despite knowing that Philby was guilty.
J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, was convinced of Philby’s treachery and enraged that he had not been prosecuted.
James Angleton would later claim that he had long suspected Philby was a spy. The evidence suggests otherwise.
Helenus ‘Buster’ Milmo, the MI5 barrister who subjected Philby to cross-examination and declared: ‘He’s as guilty as hell.’
Jim Skardon, former police detective, head of the surveillance section, and MI5’s chief interrogator. He set out to break Philby.
Dick White became Director General of MI5 in 1953 and chief of MI6 in 1956. He hunted Philby for over a decade.
Richard Brooman-White, MP. With Elliott’s help, the former MI6 officer drew up a brief for Macmillan, stoutly defending Philby.
Harold Macmillan, Foreign Secretary in 1955, told the House of Commons there was ‘no reason’ to suspect Philby of treachery.
Sir John ‘Sinbad’ Sinclair, head of MI6, accused MI5 of pursuing a vendetta against Philby.
‘The last time I spoke to a communist, knowing him to be a communist, was some time in 1934.’
Philby invited the world’s press into his mother’s flat to hear him clear his name. ‘Were you in fact the Third Man?’ one journalist asked. Philby answered: ‘No, I was not.’
Philby’s moment of triumph. His Soviet handler, Yuri Modin, described his performance as ‘breathtaking’.
‘On the subject of friendship, I’d prefer to say as little as possible.’
Commander Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb, the most famous frogman in Britain, is mobbed by a group of young admirers.
Buster Crabb prepares for a dive.
The Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze and curious crowds in Portsmouth harbour.
Prime Minister Anthony Eden gave instructions that no covert operations should take place during the Russian visit. Operation Claret went ahead anyway.
Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, and his premier, Nikolai Bulganin, are welcomed to Britain.
Kim and Eleanor Philby, his third wife, relax at the luxury bathing hut they shared with the Elliotts on Beirut’s Khalde Beach.
Philby relaxes in a mountain pool. These were the ‘happiest years’, wrote Eleanor.
A party at the Copelands’. From left to right: Eleanor Philby, Kim Philby, Miles Copeland, Nicholas Elliott, Lorraine Copeland and Elizabeth Elliott. Three spies serving three intelligence agencies: MI6, the CIA and the KGB.
Nicholas Elliott in casual pose in the family’s Beirut apartment.
Kim Philby, drunk, at a picnic in the hills outside Beirut.
Philby playing with his pet fox, Jackie. The death of this animal left him ‘inconsolable’.
The last photograph of Kim Philby together with his father. In 1960, St John visited his son in Beirut, went to a cocktail party, made a pass at a member of the embassy staff , and died. The loss of his father plunged Kim Philby into a deep alcoholic despair.
Philby’s disappearance from Beirut, and subsequent reappearance in Moscow, prompted a media frenzy.
Flora Solomon, Philby’s old friend, told MI5 that he had attempted to recruit her for ‘dangerous’ work in the communist cause in 1935.
George Blake, the Soviet spy within MI6 who was arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to forty-two years in prison.
Soviet intelligence officer Anatoly Golitsyn, whose defection rekindled the Philby investigation.