The spy who loved us: what Kim Philby’s personal letters revealed about his mind

“My darling Charlotte, Thank you for the lovely postcard which you sent to me from Cambridge. I wonder whether you yourself will be living there, round about the year 2000, studying hard or (more likely) raising hell. I say more likely raising hell, because what with your Daddy, your Grampa and your great-Grampa, you have a tradition of misbehaviour to sustain.”

So begins the letter, marked Dacha, July 28. The year, not stated, was sometime between 1983, when I was born, and 1988, the year my grandfather, the double-agent Kim Philby, died in the Soviet Union in an apartment given to him by the KGB. Neatly typed on a blue A6 sheet, it is part of a bundle my mother unearthed from the back of the safe after my father, John, died in 2009. I had known vaguely of this correspondence between Kim and my dad, who was 19 when his father absconded to Moscow in 1963, having been outed as the “Third Man” of a ring of spies at the heart of the British establishment, but only with the limited interest of a child who cannot compute her parents had lives before her own.

Aged 26, with the many questions I had never thought to ask vibrating through my mind, I finally worked through them, in search of clues.

Revealed as I read and re-read Kim’s musings from behind the iron curtain was a man of contradiction, in turn pensive and flippant, mundane and profound

My enduring fascination with espionage comes from the perspective of the family left behind. As a writer, I’m interested in placing centre stage the characters often ignored or marginalised in traditional spy stories — namely, the women. I’m not alone. Renewed interest in spy fiction has coincided with more women writers entering an evolving genre, and the rise of so-called “spychological” — spy novels investigating the personal dramas arising from political choices. Fact or fiction, the best spy thrillers, to my mind, are about the human condition; the choices people make under extreme pressure, and the ramifications of those. Whether the threat emanates from Russia or China, or wherever else, that central question remains unchanged.

Kim’s heartfelt musings on the plight of the Siberian tiger (“Daddy will explain to you the destructiveness of man”) further on in the above letter, which is signed off “Lots of cuddles and kisses from Babushka and Grampa” in tiny handwritten scrawl, are in keeping with the image I had grown up with of my grandfather. Those memories were formed over childhood holidays in Russia: my father and Kim in a white vest and dressing gown, playing chess while I sat on the sofa with his wife, Rufina, and my mother, chattering in front of a wall decorated with muskets and animal hides. They are also at odds with things I later learnt, as it became clear that Grampa Kimsky was a man with many faces.

That final period in Moscow has been variously cast by historians as one of regret, drunken dejection, comfort, relief. What was revealed as I read and re-read Kim’s musings from behind the iron curtain was a man of contradiction, in turn pensive and flippant, mundane and profound — and one with an enduring obsession with the weather. From reflections on the changing political times to discussions about the logistics of getting my dad to Moscow (“don’t worry, we have a fat file on you already!”), not to mention the shopping lists (“One LP stereo of Old Irish songs, all sung by good old-fashioned Irish tenors or baritones or whatever. I don’t want any new or original, just the right old stuff”), these letters shine light on my grandfather’s life. But they also throw up as many questions as they answer.

My new novel Edith and Kim, which borrows from this personal archive to weave together Kim’s life with that of Edith Tudor-Hart, a Bauhaus-trained photographer and communist spy who introduced young Philby to his future Soviet handler on a bench in Regent’s Park in June 1934. The book is, in part, my attempt to work through unanswered questions; to understand who he really was. Hellraiser, father, traitor, friend, lover, spy. The grandfather I knew, and the man I never will.

FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival

‘Edith and Kim’ is published by The Borough Press. Charlotte Philby will be appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival on Wednesday March 30 at 4pm at St Cross College.