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Zusatztext “Far more gripping than any novel of espionage I can remember.” —Graham Greene “To this day I am convinced that he was not an ideologue. Spying was just his way of being above lesser mortals.” —Nigel West “Addictive . . . highly polished . . . written with style and a feline sense of irony! making it a much better read than any of the other Philby literature.” — The Guardian “Philby has no home! no women! no faith. Behind the inbred upper-class arrogance! the taste for adventure! lies the self-hate of a vain misfit for whom nothing will ever be worthy of his loyalty. In the last instance! Philby is driven by the incurable drug of deceit itself.” —John le Carré Informationen zum Autor Phillip Knightley is a journalist and the author of Master Spy: The Story of Kim Philby . Graham Greene was a member of the SIS and one of the most highly regarded English novelists of the twentieth century. Among his many works are The Power and the Glory , The Human Factor , Our Man in Havana , and The Third Man . Klappentext In the annals of espionage, one name towers above all others: that of H.A.R. "Kim” Philby, the ringleader of the legendary Cambridge spies. A member of the British establishment, Philby joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1940, rose to the head of Soviet counterintelligence, and, as MI6's liaison with the CIA and the FBI, betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians, fatally compromising covert actions to roll back the Iron Curtain in the early years of the Cold War. Written from Moscow in 1967, My Silent War shook the world and introduced a new archetype in fiction: the unrepentant spy. It inspired John le Carré's Smiley novels and the later espionage novels of Graham Greene. Kim Philby was history's most successful spy. He was also an exceptional writer who gave us the great iconic story of the Cold War and revolutionized, in the process, the art of espionage writing. I. Taken On by the Secret Service It was in the summer of 1940, to the best of my knowledge, that I first made contact with the British secret service. It was a subject that had interested me for some years. In Nazi Germany and later in Spain, where I served as correspondent for The Times with General Franco's forces, I had half expected an approach. I was confident that I would recognize my man the moment he made his first cautious soundings. He would be lean, and bronzed, of course, with a clipped moustache, clipped accents and, most probably, a clipped mind. He would ask me to stick my neck out for my country and frown austerely if I mentioned pay. But no, nothing happened. If anybody did size me up during that time, he found me wanting. The only intelligence officer who took the slightest interest in me during my Spanish days was German, a certain Major von der Osten, alias Don Julio, who died early in the World War in a motor accident in New York. He used to take me to Abwehr headquarters in the Convento de las Esclavas in Burgos, and explain his large wall maps dotted with the usual coloured pins. He dined and wined me in desultory fashion for a year or so, and it proved a useful contact as far as it went. It emerged in due course that his real interest in me was to get an introduction to a lady of my acquaintance. When I obliged him, he propositioned her forthwith, both espionage-wise and otherwise. She turned him down indignantly on both counts, and his manner to me became distant. When the World War broke out, The Times sent me to Arras as their correspondent accredited to the Headquarters of the British Army. By June 1940 I was back in England, having been evacuated twice, from Boulogne and from Brest. In London, I had written two or three pieces for The Times, winding up the campaign and pointing its various morals. I have no idea what I wrote and, having just read the pung...
