Kim Philby - Philby in Literature

Philby in Literature

• One of the earliest appearances of Kim Philby as a character in fiction was in "Gentleman Traitor" by Alan Williams in 1974.
• Under the cover name of 'Mowgli' Philby appears in Duncan Kyle's WWII thriller "Black Camelot" published in 1978.
• Phllby has a key role in Mike Ripley's short story "Gold Sword" published in 'John Creasey's Crime Collection 1990' which was chosen as BBC Radio 4's Afternoon Story to mark the 50th anniversary of D-Day on 6th June 1994.
• Kim Philby appears as one of the central antagonists in William F. Buckley Jr's 2004 novel Last Call for Blackford Oakes.
• The Tim Powers novel Declare (2001) is partly based on unexplained aspects of Philby's life, providing a supernatural context for his behaviour.
• Philby is a central character in the 1981 Ted Allbeury novel The Other Side of Silence.
• The 1984 Frederick Forsyth novel The Fourth Protocol features an elderly Kim Philby's involvement in a plot to trigger a nuclear explosion in Britain. In the novel, Philby is a much more influential and connected figure in his Moscow exile than he apparently was in reality.
• The 1993 Joseph Brodsky essay Collector's Item (published in his 1995 book On Grief and Reason) contains a conjectured description of Philby's career, as well as speculations into his motivations and general thoughts on espionage and politics. The title of the essay refers to a postal stamp commemorating Philby issued in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.
• The Robert Littell novel The Company (2002) features Philby as a confidant of former CIA Counter-Intelligence chief James Angleton.
• The 2003 novel Fox at the Front by Douglas Niles and Michael Dobson depicts Philby selling secrets to the Soviet Union during the alternate Battle of the Bulge where German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel turns on the Nazis and assists the Allies in capturing all of Berlin. Before he can sell the secret of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, he is discovered by the British and is killed by members of MI5 who stage his death as a heart attack.
• German author Barbara Honigmann's Ein Kapitel aus meinem Leben tells the history of Philby's first wife, Litzi, from the perspective of her daughter.
• The 2005 John Birmingham novel Designated Targets features a cameo of Philby, under orders from Moscow to assist Otto Skorzeny's mission to assassinate Winston Churchill.
• John le Carré (David Cornwell) depicts and analyses Philby as Bill Haydon, the upper-class traitor in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In fact, Philby had ended le Carré's intelligence officer career by betraying him to the Russians.