"A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal" by Ben Macintyre

English historian and journalist Ben Macintyre is known mainly for the documentary novel "Operation Mincemeat", which tells about the dizzying scam of British intelligence on the eve of the Allied landings in Normandy. In the current book of Macintyre, his rare ability to transform a large, global history into history as a literary story, and then back, not an inch without departing from the truth appears even brighter. The fate of Kim Philby becomes Macintyre at the same time as a capacious handbook on the history of espionage in the twentieth century, and a powerful plot novel, where every word is not accidental, and every passing episode at first glance entails fatal consequences (sometimes with a delay of thirty years), and a scattering of enchanting micro stories, which you will want to retell to your friends.

Taken as a novel about the main spy of the twentieth century, Macintyre chooses not his own friend Philby, but his closest friend and colleague Nicholas Elliott. Coming from the same social stratum, a few years younger and more innocent, Elliott met Philby at the very beginning of the war, and between them almost immediately rooted and passionate friendship. The friendship that was and remains (according to Macintyre, in any case) is one of the pillars of the British privileged class and, accordingly, the foundation of the very gentlemanly of his entertainment - espionage. Throughout the book - during the joint work of the heroes in counterintelligence, their dizzying military adventures and after, already during the Cold War, when fate divorces them, the reader looks at Philby through the eyes of Elliott. In addition, his view evolves from the timid and respectful at the beginning, to the slightly patronizing in the middle (Elliott's career was more successful than the drunkard-Philby) and then to the bitter and disappointed when it was Elliott who had to put an end to exposing his old friend.

Captured by a dynamic spy story, the reader does not immediately realize that the subject that occupies the Macintyre in the first place is not the ethics of espionage, not the fate of Kim Philby, or even his legendary betrayal as such, but it is the phenomenon of a special British gentlemanly friendship that made such a betrayal possible. One of the heroines of the novel "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh characterizes this noble, subtle and completely devoid of sexual overtones feeling that flourished among the upper classes, as love that comes to children who do not yet understand its meaning. In England, it happens when you are almost adult men. According to Ben Macintyre, this friendship is like a poisonous plant: beautiful in appearance, it brings, however, deadly fruit.

An absolute thesis "my friend is not capable of such a thing", under certain conditions, can turn into a breeding ground for any evil deed. The extermination by the Soviet agents of the Catholic anti-fascist underground in Germany, the tragic death of a detachment of Albanian insurgents and many other sins and blunders of the British "secret service" are on the conscience of not only Philby, but also on the conscience of those who for years have refused to believe in the fundamental possibility of filth in their warm friendly environment. Thus, in the hands of Macintyre, the story, great and exciting in itself, also becomes a metaphor for the phenomenon of much more important and, frankly, ubiquitous - not only English at all. Any elitism, however attractive it may be, harbors dangers and temptations, and joining the elect (or just seeking to penetrate their blissful circle) should not be forgotten.