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A Spy among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal Audiobook
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Publisher Description
Master storyteller Ben Macintyre brings to life the twentieth century’s greatest spy story.
Kim Philby was the greatest spy in history, a brilliant and charming man who rose to head Britain’s counterintelligence against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War—while he was secretly working for the enemy. And nobody thought he knew Philby like Nicholas Elliott, Philby’s best friend and fellow officer in MI6.
The two men had gone to the same schools, belonged to the same exclusive clubs, grown close through the crucible of wartime intelligence work and long nights of drink and revelry. It was madness for one to think the other might be a communist spy, bent on subverting Western values and the power of the free world.
But Philby was secretly betraying his friend. Every word Elliott breathed to Philby was transmitted back to Moscow—and not just Elliott’s words, for in America, Philby had made another powerful friend: James Jesus Angleton, the crafty, paranoid head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton's and Elliott’s unwitting disclosures helped Philby sink almost every important Anglo-American spy operation for twenty years, leading countless operatives to their doom.
Even as the web of suspicion closed around him and Philby was driven to greater lies to protect his cover, his two friends never abandoned him—until it was too late. The stunning truth of his betrayal would have devastating consequences on the two men who thought they knew him best—and on the intelligence services he left crippled in his wake.
Told with heart-pounding suspense and keen psychological insight and based on personal papers and never-before-seen British intelligence files, A Spy among Friends is a high-water mark in Cold War history telling.
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“Macintyre writes with the diligence and insight of a journalist and the panache of a born storyteller…Macintyre's account of the verbal duel between Elliott and Philby in their final confrontation in Beirut in 1963 is worthy of John le Carré at his best.”
— The Guardian (London)
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“Reads like a story by Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, or John le Carré, leavened with a dollop of P. G. Wodehouse.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“The Philby story has been told many times, but never with such sensitivity…Macintyre’s focus on friendship brings an intimacy to this book that is missing from the cardboard stereotypes that populate spy novels and conventional espionage histories.”
— The Times (London) -
“Entertaining and lively, Macintyre’s account makes the best fictional thrillers seem tame.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Awards
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A New York Times bestseller
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A Wall Street Journal bestseller
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A San Francisco Chronicle bestseller
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One of Barnes & Noble's Biggest Books of the Month
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A 2014 New York Times Notable Book
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One of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2014
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One of Audible’s Best Audiobooks of 2014: Bios and memoirs
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Finalist for the 2015 Audie Award for History/Biography
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A Washington Post Best Books of the Year
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An Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Year
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Winner of the Spear's Book Award
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About Ben Macintyre
Ben Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times (London) and the bestselling author of several acclaimed books, including A Spy among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, winner of Spear’s Book Award and named a best book of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post, and others. He has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.
About John Lee
John Lee is the winner of numerous Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration. He has twice won acclaim as AudioFile’s Best Voice in Fiction & Classics. He also narrates video games, does voice-over work, and writes plays. He is an accomplished stage actor and has written and coproduced the feature films Breathing Hard and Forfeit. He played Alydon in the 1963–64 Doctor Who serial The Daleks.