Harold Adrian Russell " Kim " Philby ( 1 January 1912 – 11 May 1988 ) was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a double agent before defecting to the Soviet Union.

In 1963, Philby was revealed to be a member of the spy ring now known as the Cambridge Five, the other members of which were Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross.

Philby was an Officer of the Order of the British Empire ( OBE ) from 1946 to 1965.

Philby was born at Ambala in the Punjab while it was a province of British India.

His father, St. John Philby, a well-known author, orientalist, and convert to Islam, was a member of the Indian Civil Service and later a civil servant in Mesopotamia and advisor to King Ibn Sa ' ud of Saudi Arabia.

It is possible that it was a Viennese-born friend of Friedmann's in London, Edith Tudor Hart – herself, at this time, a Soviet agent – who first approached Philby about the possibility of working for Soviet intelligence.

" Yuri Modin, one of the KGB controllers of the Cambridge Five, agreed: " Contrary to received opinion, it was neither Guy Burgess nor one of our own agents who lured Philby into the toils of the Soviet espionage apparatus.

" So as to assist in Franco's assassination, Philby was instructed to report on vulnerable points in Franco's security and recommend ways to gain access to him and his staff.

However, such an act was never a real possibility ; upon debriefing Philby in London on 24 May 1937, Maly wrote to the NKVD, " Though devoted and ready to sacrifice himself, does not possess the physical courage and other qualities necessary for this attempt.

In December 1937, during the battle of Teruel, a Republican shell hit just in front of the car in which Philby was travelling with the correspondents Edward J. Neil of the Associated Press, Bradish Johnson of Newsweek, and Ernest Sheepshanks of Reuters.

As a result of this accident, Philby, who was well-liked by the Nationalist forces whose victories he trumpeted, was awarded the Red Cross of Military Merit by Franco on 2 March 1938.

" When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, contact with his Soviet controllers was lost and Philby failed to attend meetings.

On his first meeting in her office, Philby was surprised to see his old friend from Cambridge, Guy Burgess, who was already working there.

Burgess was fired for " irreverence ", and Philby was appointed as an instructor in the art of clandestine propaganda at the SOE's training establishment in Beaulieu, Hampshire.

Philby was originally a Section D officer and is so noted in a letter of 24 September 1940 written by Lt. Col. Valentine Vivian, the head of Section V at that time.

By September 1941, Philby was working for Section V of MI6, responsible for offensive counter-intelligence.

In late 1944, Philby was chosen to replace Cowgill as head of Section. Charles Arnold-Baker, an officer of German birth ( born Wolfgang von Blumenthal ) working or Richard Gatty in Belgium and later transferred to the Norwegian Swedish border, voiced suspicions of Philby but was ignored.

Philby was given the task of dealing with Volkov.

In October 1955 Philby was officially cleared by Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan, who told the House of Commons, " I have no reason to conclude that Mr. Philby has at any time betrayed the interests of his country, or to identify him with the so-called ' Third Man ', if indeed there was one.

* Philby, Burgess and MacLean – Spy Scandal of the Century, a BBC drama produced for TV in 1977, covers the period of the late 1940s, when British intelligence investigated Kim Philby's colleague Donald Maclean until 1955 when the British government cleared Philby because it did not have enough evidence to convict him.

In London, Philby enrolled at the School of Slavonic languages to learn Russian, helped by his father, a friend of the director.

The Spanish Army Red Cross of Military Merit awarded by General Francisco Franco to Kim Philby at Salamanca town on 2nd March 1938

Angleton, later chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's ( CIA ) counter-intelligence staff, became suspicious of Philby when he failed to pass on information relating to a British agent executed by the Gestapo in Germany.

Philby claimed to have overheard discussion of this by chance and sent a report to his controller.

These lapses by Philby aroused intense suspicion in Moscow.

Aileen Philby resented him and disliked his presence ; Americans were offended by his " natural superciliousness " and " utter contempt for the whole pyramid of values, attitudes, and courtesies of the American way of life.

Under a cloud of suspicion raised by his highly-visible and intimate association with Burgess, Philby returned to London.

After being exonerated, Philby was no longer employed by MI6, and Soviet intelligence lost all contact with him.

" Prompted by Elliott's accusations, Philby confirmed the charges of espionage and describe his intelligence activities on behalf of the Soviets.

Philby was under virtual house arrest, guarded, with all visitors screened by the KGB.

Philby occupied himself by writing his memoirs, published in England in 1968 under the title My Silent War.

Though Philby claimed publicly in January 1988 that he did not regret his decisions, and that he missed nothing about England except some friends, Colman's mustard, and Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, his KGB-appointed wife Rufina later described Philby as " disappointed in many ways " by what he found in Moscow.

" Philby drank heavily and suffered from loneliness and depression ; according to Rufina, he had attempted suicide by slashing his wrists in the 1960s.

* One of the earliest appearances of Kim Philby as a character in fiction was in " Gentleman Traitor " by Alan Williams in 1974.

* 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.

In fact, Philby had ended le Carré's intelligence officer career by betraying him to the Russians.

Philby is played by Toby Stephens.

* In the 1987 adaptation of the above mentioned Frederick Forsyth novel The Fourth Protocol, Kim Philby is portrayed by Michael Bilton.

* In the 2007 ( TNT ) television three-part series The Company, produced by Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, and John Calley, Philby is portrayed by Tom Hollander.

Philby found that the award proved helpful in obtaining access to fascist circles: " Before then ," he later wrote, " there had been a lot of criticism of British journalists from Franco officers who seemed to think that the British in general must be a lot of Communists because so many were fighting with the International Brigades.

Philby was able to advise Ibn Saud on how far Saud could go in occupying all Arabia without incurring the wrath of the British government, then the principal power in the Middle East.

He served in London ( German political department, Third Secretary ); Washington ( Third Secretary, when Donald Maclean of the Cambridge five was Head of Chancery, and then as one of the 11 Second Secretaries with H. A. R. Philby, seeing NATO signed on 4 April 1949, all when Sir Oliver Franks was Ambassador ); transferred to Brussels 10 September 1951 ( Head of Chancery ) acted as Chargé d ' Affaires in 1952 ); London ( no.