Philby: The Long Road to Moscow

Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville have written a thorough and well-balanced account of the life and times of Kim Philby, arguably the KGB's most successful penetration agent. Their book, written several years after Page, Leitch and Knightley's "Philby: the Spy Who Betrayed a Generation," has the advantage of a keen perspective, perhaps gained by the passage of time. The book is especially enlightening about the political climate in the 'thirties and the ferment that made Cambridge University such a potent recruiting ground for the Communist movement. The authors, in fact, highlight an essential tragic irony, since Kim Philby apparently had a choice whether to attend Christ Church College, Oxford, or Trinity College, Cambridge. As they observe: "Had Kim gone up to Oxford he might never have become a Russian spy." (p.19) As the authors inform us in their forward (p. xiii), their aim is objectivity, to demythologize rather than demonize Philby, divorcing him from the usual caricature of the insidious "viper . . . in the trusting bosom of his country," who betrayed his class as well as his nation. By considering the "ordinary man" in the "extraordinary situation" of his historical moment, they enable the reader to understand why Kim Philby made the irrevocable ideological choice to travel the long and increasingly lonely road to Moscow.