On the day of the launch of new streaming platform ITVX, the broadcaster released riveting new true story drama A Spy Among Friends, telling the tale of treacherous British inside man Kim Philby.
Played by Guy Pearce, Philby duped MI6 for years while secretly spilling secrets during the Second World War and the Cold War to Soviet intelligence, all the while keeping his colleague and close friend Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis) in the dark.
The series also stars Anna Maxwell Martin as MI5’s Lily Thomas, a fictional character brought in to investigate Elliott’s potential involvement in Philby’s escape from prosecution.
Over the years, Philby has become known as the most notorious double agent in British history, with his tale being told in Ben Macintyre’s novel A Spy Among Friends, which was published in 2014.
While we know that Philby was eventually discovered and his deception brought into the light, what happened to him after the revelation was made?
What happened to Kim Philby, the inspiration behind ITVX’s new drama?
Born Harold Adrian Russell Philby, in 1940, Philby’s work with MI6 began, and he was quick to rise the ranks over the following years.
He resigned from the secret intelligence service in 1951, having been suspected of tipping off two other spies believed to have had links to Soviet intelligence, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, who both took off for Moscow that year.
Despite his resignation, Philby returned to his work as a spy four years later following his exoneration, while also continuing his work as a journalist in Beirut, Lebanon.
However, he couldn’t maintain his facade forever, as a few years later, he was officially found out for his many wrongdoings.
In 1963, it was finally revealed that he had been secretly feeding confidential information as a Soviet agent, and that he was a member of the ‘Cambridge Five’, a traitorous spy ring made up of KGB spies who were all recruited while studying at Cambridge during the 1930s.
That year, he was able to flee to Moscow, where he was granted Soviet citizenship and remained until his death in 1988.
He was awarded several medals posthumously and received a hero’s funeral in the USSR.
In the series A Spy Among Friends, it’s shown how Elliott requested that he be allowed by MI5 to fly to Beirut so that he could confront Philby himself, in the hopes of securing a recorded confession.
Elliott waited for Philby at an apartment that had been bugged, where they shared what sounded like a civil conversation.
Philby did end up writing a partial confession, but he still managed to make his way to Moscow, further fuelling suspicion that Elliott might have taken it easy on his friend.
In 2018, a square in the Russian capital was renamed Kim Philby Square in honour of the double agent’s service to the Soviet Union.
A Spy Among Friends is available to watch on ITVX.
