cover image My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy

My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy

Kim Philby. Modern Library, $15 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-375-75983-3

Treachery is the subject of My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy, the 1968 memoir of Kim Philby, the double agent who headed the Cambridge Five spy ring that fed British and American WWII and Cold War intelligence to the Soviet Union. Philby became a communist and Soviet agent in the 1930s, then easily joined MI6 and rose to be head of British Counterintelligence before seeking asylum in Moscow in 1963 (where he lived until his death in 1988). Back in print after 12 years, Philby's riveting, psychologically acute tale of spycraft offers a rather unflattering picture of the British secret service, and also addresses why he remained committed to communism even after revelations of Stalin's crimes.