When Grahan Greene, one of the most famous English novelists of the 20th century, accepted the offer to join the Secret Intelligence Service -MI6- he was fascinated by the stories that his colleagues told him of what happened in Vienna before, during and after World War II.
One of the stories that most surprised him was the escape route that the British spies had planned, knowing the danger their lives were running when the Nazi threat hung over Austria through the annexation of the Aunchluss (1938). The MI6 agents would escape, if necessary, through the sewers and underground tunnels of Vienna, which they had perfectly memorized.
That story fascinated Greene and was his inspiration to write the script for Carol Reed’s famous film The Third Man (1949), in which the subsoil of the Austrian capital is masterfully recounted. The script would give way to the novel, published in 1950. The Third Man was considered by the British Film Institute as the best British film of all time.
One of the agents who was stationed in that Nazi-filled Vienna was Kim Philby, the most famous spy of all time.
Harold Adrian Russell Kim Philby was part of the so-called ‘Cambridge Five’, a group of young men from the English elite who, fascinated by Marxism for years, collaborated with the KGB.
Kilby, who was born in British India, studied at Trinity College and was the cornerstone of ‘The Five’. The Russians recruited him in 1934 and undercover as a journalist he covered the Civil War on the side of the insurgents. General Franco even got to decorate him. After the Spanish war Philby joined MI6 becoming the most coveted mole of the KGB.
In the 1950s, Philby was suspected of working for the Soviets along with his college classmates Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, who, once discovered as Russian agents in 1951, escaped and took refuge in the Soviet Union. Philby managed to allay suspicions and left his post at MI6 in 1951 after being found not guilty of the charges against him.
After abandoning espionage he returned to journalism, but in 1955 new and unappealable evidence of his treason appeared and in 1966 he escaped to Moscow, via Beirut. Philby lived with the rank of KGB chief until his death in 1988. He never showed remorse for his actions and for years, afflicted with alcoholism, used to ask KGB agents who came and went from London to bring him Colman’s mustard and the newspapers. Londoner.
After his death and the burial of his ashes in the Kuntsevo cemetery, reserved for the heroes of the Soviet Union, the other two members of the Cambridge group were unmasked, who turned out to be John Cairncross and Anthony Blunt, the art expert who worked personally under the orders of Queen Elizabeth.
One of the reasons that Philby always argued when explaining the British government’s lack of reaction to cut off the espionage of the Cambridge group in favor of the KGB was the fact that in those years it was “inconceivable that someone born in the ruling class of the British Empire were a traitor.” Blunt benefited from this situation and despite being discovered, not only did he never go to prison, but he remained attached to Buckingham Palace until 1972.
It is precisely this characteristic of the English elite that is the common thread of the magnificent series that has just premiered on Movistar Plus, A spy among friends, in which Philby’s escape is recounted.
The series, directed by Nick Murphy and based on the novel by Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends, is masterfully interpreted by Damian Lewis and Australian Guy Pearce. If you like the world of spies, you shouldn’t miss this series whose staging is one of the best that will be seen on television this year.
