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Ben Macintyre

Book of the Week: Ben Macintyre - A Spy Among Friends: Episode 5

A Spy Among Friends

Episode 5

Ben Macintyre - A Spy Among Friends

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Ben Macintyre - A Spy Among Friends, Episode 5

Beirut 1963, in a bugged room. Nicholas Elliott finally confronts traitor Kim Philby.

After 30 years of friendship, Nicholas Elliott finally confronts Philby, and the truth is revealed. Read by Simon Russell Beale.

With access to newly released MI5 files and previously unseen family papers, and with the cooperation of former officers of MI6 and the CIA, author Ben Macintyre unlocks the last great secret of the Cold War.
 
Kim Philby was the most notorious British defector and Soviet mole in history. Agent, double agent, traitor and enigma, he betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians in the early years of the Cold War. Philby's two closest friends in the intelligence world, Nicholas Elliott of MI6 and James
Jesus Angleton the CIA intelligence chief, thought they knew Philby better than anyone - only to discover they had not known him at all.
 
This is a story of intimate duplicity; of loyalty, trust and treachery, class and conscience; of an ideological battle waged by men with cut-glass accents and well-made suits in the comfortable clubs and restaurants of London and Washington; of male friendships forged, and then systematically betrayed.
 
In the final episode of A Spy Among Friends Nicholas Elliott confronts Kim Philby who finally admits the scale and depth of his betrayal, the greatest in the twentieth century.
 
Read by: Simon Russell Beale
 
Producer: David Roper
A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4

Book of the Week: Ben Macintyre - A Spy Among Friends

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Factual: Crime & Justice

Ben Macintyre tells the story of notorious British defector and Soviet mole Kim Philby

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