11Story

19 January 2010

Kim Philby

 

Kim Philby. J. Wilds (fl. mid- 1950s). London, 1955 Photograph. J Wilds / Keystone / Getty Images [Hulton Archive] © Getty Images 3377824

On the Getty Images website, captions to photographs of Kim Philby (1912-1988) are inconsistent in what they call him. This reveals ambiguity about identity and how to determine it. During his 30 years as an agent of the Soviet Union (1933-1963), the uncomfortable truth in Philby’s case is that no-one was able – as Shakespeare would have understood - to ‘find the mind’s construction in the face’.    A few captions acknowledge that he was both a British intelligence officer and a Soviet spy, but others refuse even to admit the possibility: he is therefore a ‘British double agent’, a label that denies Philby was a principled opponent (an ‘ideological’ spy ) - the actual role on which his success depended - and casts him instead as a self-serving mercenary . But to have passed secret information in both directions (what a double agent does) would have blown his cover and makes no sense given his later defection to Moscow. A double-dealer was not only easier to vilify but posed fewer questions as to how he got away with it.   Nearly fifty years after the event, property writer Roger Wilkes offers a reconstruction-with-hindsight of the immediate circumstances in which this photograph was taken - a news conference called by Philby in his mother’s flat on 8 November 1955, after Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had publicly (and mistakenly) cleared him of being a suspected spy:     ‘Pictures of Philby holding court in his mother's fourth-floor sitting-room flashed around the world. Framed family photographs stand on a rather fine cabinet and silk lampshades are reflected in the glow of burnished mahogany. Beneath the feet of the inky-fingered throng, one suspects, lies the finest Wilton or Axminster, for Dora was a wealthy and tasteful home-maker […] Philby's press conference sealed his image as the wronged innocent, arrogant and defiant in his upper-class South Kensington fastness.’ (Read the Telegraph article [27 October 2001]) Like the framed photographs, the mirror above the mantelpiece was in effect an agent of an agent, influencing what others made of him. Being photographed in front of it was masterly because in an uncontrived way it visually reinforced the verbal message that he had nothing to hide: ‘The first duty of an underground worker is to perfect not only his cover story but also his cover personality.’ (Kim Philby, My silent war. London, Panther, 1969, p.180).

 
 

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