![]() ![]() Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce act their socks off. ![]() One of Philby's first assignments for the NKVD was to rifle through his father's papers. A Spy Among Friends: an extremely good espionage thriller if you can figure out how to watch it Double agents are everywhere. On a visit to Vienna in 1933-34, Philby met Litzi Friedman, a Communist of Hungarian Jewish descent, whom he secretly married and who persuaded him to become a Soviet agent. His father was nonchalant about this radical zeal: "Excess can always be toned down later," he said. Philby became a Communist sympathizer while at Cambridge University. His father was an able linguist who became a devoted adviser of King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, converted to Islam and was an intrepid desert explorer. ![]() In his fluent but derivative biography, "A Spy Among Friends," Ben Macintyre rehashes a familiar story. All the time, though, he was spying with ruthless efficiency for Soviet Russia, remitting many damaging Anglo-American secrets to Moscow. During the 1940s he was an efficient, debonair and popular officer in the U.K.'s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) who was expected to rise to its highest level. Kim Philby's duplicity has appalled and fascinated his compatriots for over half a century. ![]()
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