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A review by komet2020
KIM PHILBY: The Spy I Married by Eleanor Philby
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Kim Philby: The Spy I Married is Eleanor Philby's recounting of the years she was married to Kim Philby, one of Britain's most notorious spies who had loyally served Moscow for 30 years, all while presenting to his friends, colleagues, and Eleanor herself the veneer of an urbane, witty, compassionate, and suave Englishman (who had risen to the highest ranks of Britain's MI6, which is analogous to the CIA).
This book makes for sobering reading and shows the costs deception can exact within a loving relationship. Philby comes across as a person with a certain sensitivity and disingenuousness in his personality. But his fealty to the Soviet Union, to which he pledged himself while a student at Cambridge during the early 1930s, proved to be total and absolute, overriding all other personal attachments in his life. I felt sorry for Eleanor because she had fully invested herself in her marriage to Philby (even to the point of going to Moscow to be with Philby after his January 1963 defection from Beirut, Lebanon -- where the couple had made a life together for 4 years) and ended up being cruelly deceived by her husband. In case you're wondering: the marriage did not last.
This book makes for sobering reading and shows the costs deception can exact within a loving relationship. Philby comes across as a person with a certain sensitivity and disingenuousness in his personality. But his fealty to the Soviet Union, to which he pledged himself while a student at Cambridge during the early 1930s, proved to be total and absolute, overriding all other personal attachments in his life. I felt sorry for Eleanor because she had fully invested herself in her marriage to Philby (even to the point of going to Moscow to be with Philby after his January 1963 defection from Beirut, Lebanon -- where the couple had made a life together for 4 years) and ended up being cruelly deceived by her husband. In case you're wondering: the marriage did not last.