-Caveat Lector-
> ISSUE 1543Monday 16 August 1999
>
> 'The perfect spy, the perfect husband'
>
> <Picture><Picture>The widow of Kim Philby, the MI6 traitor,
> insists that their marriage was almost embarrassingly idyllic. He
> would, however, never share the secrets of his work as a KGB
> operative - or of his home-made curries. Interview by Marcus
> Warren in Moscow
>
> SHE is sitting beside an armchair that belonged to Guy Burgess,
> opposite an engraving presumed to be a gift from Anthony Blunt,
> and next to a huge radio on which her husband listened to the BBC
> World Service. This is the Moscow flat in which, if Kim Philby's
> widow is to be believed, she and her husband lived in matrimonial
> bliss that lasted until his death 11 years ago.
>
> As Rufina tells it, her marriage to the spy who betrayed a
> generation of British intelligence officers to his Soviet
> controllers was not just preternaturally happy; in its own quiet
> way, theirs was one of the great love stories of recent times. He
> called her his "tempestuous redhead". Surrounded by mementoes of
> her late husband, at 66 she is still a handsome woman, whose red
> hair is complemented by a large pair of pink-rimmed specs.
>
> <Picture>
> The spy who loved me: Rufina Philby insists her husband was not a
> traitor "After Kim, I couldn't live with anyone else," she says.
> "After his death I tried to remember anything he had done wrong
> so that I could feel bitter. But there was nothing. He really was
> perfect, quite the perfect husband."
>
> Even so, she recalls him complaining towards the end of his life:
> "No one ever gave me anything. They only took." There seems to be
> more than a hint in this of resentment at being manipulated or
> unrewarded by the system he embraced with such fervour as a young
> undergraduate at Cambridge. But his widow is unable to throw any
> light on this: extraordinarily, Rufina never talked about "work"
> with her husband, even though it was surely the key to
> understanding the man she loved and describes as being constantly
> aware of the demands of his profession.
>
> "I wasn't interested in it." she says. "Especially in Russia, it
> was something forbidden. I understood he didn't want to talk
> about it and he knew he couldn't either. You have to remember
> those times. Also, he never broke the rules of his profession."
>
> Like the more sophisticated of his KGB colleagues, she argues
> that her husband was not a traitor: his decision to serve
> communism pre-dated his joining the SIS. Call him what you like -
> cold-blooded, ruthless, a fanatic for an evil cause - she would
> have us believe that he never betrayed his "ideals".
>
> "He didn't feel like a traitor. At the very beginning he took one
> side and was always for that side," she says. "He was fighting
> against fascism. But what came after the war . . . perhaps he
> wasn't completely happy about it."
>
> So how did the reality of Soviet Communism measure up when he
> finally defected in 1963? Not too well, it seems. "He looked
> Truth in the eyes," she says, resorting to Russian for the only
> time in our conversation. Then she switches back to English. "He
> had to live here. He just accepted it as it was."
>
> If her husband did indeed fix Truth with his stare and dare it to
> do its worst, Rufina sometimes prefers not to. I ask about the
> evidence, well documented, that one of Philby's first tasks on
> being recruited in the 1930s was to spy on his own father, the
> eccentric Orientalist, St John Philby.
>
> She looks pained. "About his father . . . I can't believe it,"
> she stammers. "I don't know. I can't believe everything in the
> books. Maybe he wasn't completely happy about that. But he had no
> choice."
>
> By the time he arrived in the Soviet Union, he was faced with a
> limited choice: to drink himself to death like fellow spy Guy
> Burgess - a course Philby did indeed pursue at one stage - or to
> adopt the dogged fatalism that eventually saw him through the
> rest of his life. For humiliation was heaped on him by his KGB
> masters, some of whom never trusted the man. After his arrival
> and debriefing, they gave him nothing of any significance to do
> for years. The Philbys' flat was bugged. Kim himself never
> crossed the threshold of the Lubyanka, KGB headquarters, until he
> was carried in feet first in his coffin to lie in state after his
> death. His widow's monthly pension is a mere £15.50.
>
> Complaining was not in either of their natures, she insists, and
> certainly did not infect their relationship. Philby was deeply
> grateful for the small acts of kindness, such as bringing him
> regular cups of tea, that she says any Russian woman would
> naturally offer. For his part, he remained the quintessential
> Englishman abroad, dreaming of nipping down to the pub for a
> quick drink, enjoying his Oxford marmalade on toast, or making
> homemade Bath Olivers out of chunks of chocolate and matzos from
> the Moscow synagogue.
>
> This image of Philby contrasts starkly with that of the spy who
> betrayed untold numbers of Western agents, leading to their
> deaths; of the KGB informant, responsible for the boatlands of
> Albanian emigrés who, in 1949/50, were picked off when they
> landed in their homeland in a fatal bid to overturn a communist
> dictatorship.
>
> Rufina's description of life together is one of such contentment
> that she feels she has to apologise. She quotes a passage from
> Anna Karenina about happy families being all alike, afraid that
> the story of their marriage will sound too good to be true.
>
> Nothing has changed in the flat they shared, hidden away in the
> centre of town with its spectacular view over the rooftops
> (unlike my own flat, with its view of a 12-lane highway, which
> was secured for the Telegraph by Philby himself after he bumped
> into the then correspondent - a chum from the Middle East - at
> the Bolshoi Theatre.) The only additions to its interior since
> Philby's death are his portraits in the sitting-room.
>
> Next to two deer hides hangs Piranesi's Antonine Column, the
> engraving which mysteriously arrived from London and which Philby
> was convinced was a secret sign from Anthony Blunt.
>
> Still in place on the bookshelves above Philby's favourite radio
> are the translations of Russian classics, together with Trollope,
> Arthur Bryant, Fitzroy Maclean, Anthony Powell, even Who's Who
> 1976. There appears to be nothing in Russian; in 25 years in the
> place Philby never really got the hang of the language.
>
> Between listening to the BBC first thing in the morning, and
> ending the day watching the nine o'clock news on Soviet
> television with Rufina, Philby would simply potter about or shut
> himself away in his study or the kitchen. Born in India, he would
> labour over his curries for hours. "That was the only time when I
> couldn't interrupt him or he became irritated if I did," Rufina
> recalls. "Even when he was doing some sensitive work in the study
> and I came in with a cup of tea, he would smile. But when he was
> concentrating on his saucepan and the curry" - she imitates his
> manner of stirring - "he would frown and say 'What do you want?'
> Everything he cooked was quite perfect."
>
> When they first met, through the traitor George Blake's Russian
> wife, she was on the shelf, a copy-editor still without a husband
> and unlikely to find one as she was by then in her late-30s.
> Philby, married three times already, was having an affair with
> Melinda, wife of Donald Maclean, yet another famous British
> defector. He was also slowly killing himself with drink.
>
> At first she was not overly impressed by the charming, if
> somewhat seedy, Englishman. Their courtship in the summer of 1970
> was brief, however, and she soon moved into his flat. (She is
> adamant that she was not a stooge supplied by the KGB to report
> on Philby, and was not linked to the KGB in any way until she met
> her future husband.)
>
> Not only was the alcohol slowly killing him, but there was also
> the danger that the party tricks he played when sozzled would
> hasten the process. Once he nearly choked while trying to swallow
> a cigarette-lighter after an evening on the bottle.
>
> Within a year of their meeting, Rufina had weaned him off the
> booze. According to a much-quoted line of Russian poetry, a
> Russian woman "will stop a galloping horse and rush into a
> burning hut". This one certainly saved the life of a legendary
> foreign spy old enough to be her father.
>
> Rufina does not often use the study with its potent mementoes: it
> belonged to her husband's world. But she said she was grateful
> for my visit, and happy to show me into his sanctum. She doesn't
> resent the intrusions of those trying to find out more about her
> husband. "It is always interesting for me to meet new people,
> especially when they're Englishmen," she says before I leave.
> "They make me feel closer to Kim somehow."
>
> • The Private Life of Kim Philby (Little, Brown, £18.99), by
> Rufina Philby, is available for the special price of £15.19 from
> our retail partner, Amazon. Click here to order a copy online.
>
>
> 26 July 1999: [International] FBI suspected Philby was 'Third
> Man' for 12 years 17 January 1998: Living with the ghost of a
> traitor [interview with Rufina Philby] 10 January 1998: [UK News]
> How Britain was betrayed: the KGB's story 19 December 1997:
> [International] Pimms and marmalade helped Philby survive 31 May
> 1997: My friendship with Philby
>
>
>
>
> © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 1999. Terms & Conditions
> of reading. Commercial information.
>
> <Picture: Email>
>
>From telegraph.co.uk
A<>E<>R
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