- Born
- Died
- Birth nameHarold Adrian Russell Philby
- Kim Philby was born on January 1, 1912 in Ambala, Punjab, British India [now Haryana, India]. He was married to Rufina Ivanovna Pukhova, Eleanor Brewer, Aileen Furse and Litzi Friedmann. He died on May 11, 1988 in Moscow, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Russia].
- SpousesRufina Ivanovna Pukhova(1971 - May 11, 1988) (his death)Eleanor Brewer(January 1959 - May 1965)Aileen Furse(September 25, 1946 - December 1957) (her death, 4 children)Litzi Friedmann(February 24, 1934 - 1946) (divorced)
- He was awarded the O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for his services during World War II but was stripped of this title in 1965 when he was exposed as a double agent for the Soviet Union.
- Enjoyed reading the spy novels of British author John LeCarre so much that he invited LeCarre to have dinner with him in the Kremlin. LeCarre (a former agent of MI6) replied, "I could never sit at the same table with a traitor to Her Majesty's government.".
- Named after the title character of Rudyard Kipling's novel "Kim".
- Last words, in reply to a telephoned congratulations on the anniversary of the Soviet victory of 1945: "What victory?"
- He was part of what was called "The Cambridge Five" that included, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, John Cairncross and Donald Maclean. Their exploits were reenacted in the miniseries Cambridge Spies (2003).
- [from a letter to Hugh Trevor-Roper] I cannot comment on my own egocentricity or schizophrenia, especially as I have never quite understood what schizophrenia is. For all that, I am pretty certain that I could produce one psychiatrist to say that I was schizophrenic, another to say that I was abnormally single-minded, yet a third to say that I was both or either. I saw that Malcolm Muggeridge, the old rascal, seriously linked my career as a Soviet agent with the fact that my father had become a Moslem. To what could I not ascribe Malcolm's total alienation from practically everything? Such long-range psychiatry is fun and helps to fill a column, but it serves little else.
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