A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

Acknowledgements

I am again indebted to many people who have provided guidance, encouragement and hospitality during the writing of this book, as well as access to documents, photographs and their own memories. I am particularly grateful to the families and descendants of people in a story that remains, for many, a painful chapter of the past. This book would have been impossible to write without the generous help of Mark and David Elliott, son and grandson of Nicholas Elliott, who have proved an endless fund of support and practical assistance. I was also privileged to meet Elizabeth Elliott, widow of Nicholas, just a few weeks before her death in 2012. The list that follows is incomplete, since many of those who were most helpful to me have understandably asked, for professional reasons, to remain anonymous: you know who you are, and how grateful I am.

I would particularly like to thank the following: Nathan Adams, Christopher Andrew, Dick Beeston, the late Rick Beeston, Paul Bellsham, Keith Blackmore, Tom Bower, Roger Boyes, Alex Brooman-White, Caroline Brooman-White, Anthony Cavendish, Rozanne Colchester, Gordon Corera, David Cornwell, Jane Cornwell, Leo Darroch, Natasha Fairweather, Frances Gibb, Oleg Gordievsky, Peter Greenhalgh, Barbara Honigmann, William Hood, Alistair Horne, Keith Jeffery, Margy Kinmonth, Jeremy Lewis, Peter Linehan, Robert McCrum, Philip Marsden, Nick Mays, Tommy Norton, John Julius Norwich, Michael Pakenham, Roland Philipps, Harry Chapman Pincher, Gideon Rachman, Felicity Rubinstein, Jenni Russell, the John Smedley Archives, Xan Smiley, Wolfgang Suschitzky, Anthony Tait, Rupert Walters, Nigel West, Damian Whitworth.

I am indebted to Robert Hands, Peter Martland, Richard Aldrich and Hayden Peake for reading the manuscript and saving me from many embarrassing mistakes: the errors that remain are entirely my own. Once again, Jo Carlill has achieved miracles of picture research; I have enjoyed and profited greatly from working with the BBC: Janice Hadlow, Martin Davidson, Dominic Crossley-Holland, Francis Whateley, Tom McCarthy, Ben Ryder, Louis Caulfield, Adam Scourfield, Dinah Rogers, Gezz Mounter and Jane Chan. My colleagues and friends at The Times have provided help and advice. The generous provision of a fellow commonership by St John’s College Cambridge enabled me to finish the book in the ideal scholarly surroundings.

It is a pleasure and privilege to be published by Bloomsbury: my thanks to Katie Johnson and Anna Simpson for their unfailing proficiency and patience, and to Michael Fishwick, my dear friend and editor. Ed Victor, as ever, has steered another huge and complicated project into port with the skill of a master-mariner.

My family deserves both praise and sympathy for putting up with yet another consuming spy-project without throwing me out; and to Kate, all my love.