Philby: the Long Road to Moscow

Kim Philby's theft of America's atomic secrets made his name synonymous with treason. It made monkeys out of his own people--twice. He penetrated the heart of England's secret service, lived a double life for three decades, and then escaped in the nick of time to comfortable retirement in Moscow--a favorite son who lived in a way calculated to destroy his family; a viper whose deadly cunning kept him in the trusting arms of his country. This book examines the political background of Philby's story, the moral dilemmas he faced, the whole milieu of espionage that blunts morality and restricts political choice. The authors suggest that Kim Philby was essentially an ordinary man caught up in an extraordinary situation; that once he embarked--with the most generous of motives--on a career as a Soviet spy, he found himself entrapped and finally destroyed by this twentieth-century paradox.