Kim Philby

Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 1912 – 11 May 1988^[1]) was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union. A communist, he served as 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 comprised Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross. 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 concern that he might be a double agent.^[3] Philby was an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) from 1946 to 1965.


Born in Ambala, Punjab, British India, Philby was the son of St. John Philby, a member of the Indian Civil Service and, later, a civil servant in Mesopotamia, a well-known author of Orientalist, a convert to Islam,^[4] and an advisor to Ibn Sa'ud of Saudi Arabia.
Nicknamed "Kim" after the eponymous young Indian spy of Rudyard Kipling's novel, Philby attended Aldro prep school. Following in the footsteps of his father, he continued to Westminster School, which he left in 1928 at the age of 16. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read history and economics. Whilst at Cambridge, he was a member of the Labour Club, and canvassed for the Labour candidate for Cambridge in the 1931 election. He graduated in 1933 with a 2:1 degree in economics.^[5]
Upon Philby's graduation, Maurice Dobb – a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and tutor in economics – introduced him to the World Federation for the Relief of the Victims of German Fascism in Paris. The World Federation was one of innumerable fronts operated by the German Communist Willi Münzenberg, a member of the Reichstag who had fled to France in 1933.^[6] Dobb, himself a Communist sympathiser, also placed Philby in contact with the Comintern underground in Vienna, Austria.



To betray,you must first belong.

Kim Philby.