Kim Philby
The stark horror of Barbara Comyns’s fiction was all too autobiographical
Comyns’s fans have long enjoyed the novels’ macabre details and black humour. Now Avril Horner reveals their disturbing sources
Barefaced lies
Mark Hollingsworth describes how the KGB became the world’s most industrious conspiracy-theory factory, with its agents of influence dedicated to sowing maximum confusion
Too posh for the cosh
In 2014, Ben Macintyre presented a BBC2 documentary based on his book A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the…
Secret understanding
John le Carré once wrote sadly that he felt ‘shifty’ about his contribution to the glamorisation of the spying business.…
The man who hunted himself
Graham Greene was constantly searching for peace of mind along with escapist thrills, says Nicholas Shakespeare
Oleg Gordievsky, the ultimate spy story — and Ben Macintyre, the best writer to tell it
Spy stories, whether the stuff of fictional thrillers or, as in the case of Sergei Skripal, the real deal —…
There’s no substitute for human intelligence
Spying may be one of the two oldest professions, but unlike the other one it has changed quite a lot…
Garbo’s mystique
With two new biographies of Kim Philby out, an espionage drama by Sir David Hare on BBC2, and the recent…
The right sort of chap
Kim Philby’s treachery escaped detection for so long through the stupidity and snobbery of the old-boy network surrounding him, says Philip Hensher
