A Spy Among Friends spoilers follow.
New ITVX drama A Spy Among Friends tells the true story of a very British scandal – how British Intelligence officer Harold "Kim" Philby (played by Guy Pearce) secretly worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union for decades after World War II until he eventually defected to Moscow in 1963.
While there have been other dramas about Philby and the men who were part of his spy ring known as the Cambridge Five, this six-part series details not just Philby's life and crimes, but also focuses on his relationship with fellow British agent Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis).
Elliott was Philby's close friend and staunch supporter – he defended Philby against accusations of treachery for years – yet he was also the man sent to Beirut (where Philby was working as a journalist) to interrogate Philby and bring him home when Philby's ties with Russia were finally uncovered.
So how much of A Spy Among Friends is based on true events?
A Spy Among Friends: The true story
The series is based on the book of the same name by Ben Macintyre, which was published in 2014. (He's also the author of Operation Mincemeat, made into the 2021 movie starring Colin Firth, and SAS: Rogue Heroes, which has been adapted into the current hit BBC drama.)
What to Read Next
Macintyre's well-researched book looks at the friendship between Philby and Elliott, as does the series, and spans the years from when they first met in 1940 to their final encounter in Beirut in 1963.
While a lot of what you see in the series seems hard to believe – how could Philby have sold secrets to the Soviets under the noses of intelligence officers who were his friends, for decades? – most of what is on screen is, in fact, completely true.
Kim Philby and Nicholas Elliott
Cambridge-educated Nicholas Elliott and Kim Philby became close friends in 1940, when they were both working in separate departments of the British Intelligence Service.
It is believed that Philby had been recruited by the Soviets as far back as 1934 and, in the three decades he divulged British secrets, he held a series of well-placed posts, including at MI6 and as secretary to the British Embassy in Washington (where he liaised with American intelligence agencies).
He secretly worked with four other men – Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross – who became known as the Cambridge Five after their spy ring was uncovered. (They all had code names, with Philby known as Sonny or Mr Stanley).
Burgess and Maclean fled to Moscow in 1951 before they could be arrested for spying, and many believe it was Philby who found out they were under suspicion and tipped them off. He was cleared by the Foreign Secretary at the time, Harold Macmillan, but was forced to resign from MI6 and, on Nicholas Elliott’s urging, went to work as a journalist in the Middle East, eventually settling in Beirut.
In 1961, a Russian defector passed on information that implicated Philby as a spy and traitor, and Nicholas Elliott was interrogated to see if he knew anything about Philby's other life (he didn't). Philby's betrayal of the friend who had always tried to protect and defend him led to Nicholas's journey to Beirut to finally confront him.
In his book With My Little Eye, Nicholas Elliott wrote about his last contact with Kim Philby in 1963. According to his obituary in The Independent, he volunteered to challenge his former friend and was instructed to go to Beirut, where he got Philby's confession in writing, as we see in the series.
After Elliott returned to London, Philby fled to Moscow under cover of night aboard a Soviet freighter (as the series shows). Elliott had left his friend under guard, but in a speech Philby gave years later (as reported by The Guardian), he said he was able to escape because the agent who kept an eye on him could not resist going skiing after hearing about the fresh snow on the nearby Lebanese mountains.
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According to a 1994 New York Times article, Philby's new life in Russia wasn't as he had expected, with him spending his first few years in the country under house arrest.
"The KGB told him they were afraid the British MI6 was going to try and assassinate him, so he had to have guards all the time, close surveillance," a Russian friend, Mikhail Lyubimov, told the newspaper's reporter. "The KGB was too stupid and impotent to make use of him. This destroyed him. This ruined his life."
Kim Philby married Rufina Pukhova in 1971 and lived in Moscow with her until his death, aged 76, in 1988. There were rumours Philby had died by suicide, but they were never confirmed, and in an interview with The Independent, his widow denied it was true. Philby was given a hero's funeral, and in 2018 a square in Moscow was named in his honour.
Nicholas Elliott remained in the Intelligence Service until 1969. He died in London in April 1994, aged 77.
A Spy Among Friends: the fiction
Much of what is shown of Philby and Elliott's relationship on screen is true, having been based on Elliott's own writings and author Ben Macintyre's meticulous research. However, there is one big part of the story on screen that isn't true at all.
Throughout the series, we see Nicholas Elliott being quizzed by female MI5 officer Lily Thomas (Anna Maxwell Martin) about what he knows about Kim Philby and his betrayal. This is all made up for the show: Lily is an entirely fictional character – the only one in the series – and while the interrogation scenes between her and Nicholas are gripping, they never actually happened, or at least not in the way we see on screen.
In an interview for the launch of the ITVX series, Anna Maxwell Martin explained her role: "She's not in Ben's [Macintyre] book. She's not real. She's invented. She's Alex's [screenwriter Alex Cary] creation."
In an interview with Radio Times, Alex Cary talked about why he added a fictional character to a true story.
His "original way into the story was through the Lily character," he says, and "once I understood her part in it and Elliott's journey with her, because a lot of this is about the ending of one very deep, intimate friendship and the beginning of another one he wasn't expecting. So then it became a sort of battle of a personal, intimate story between Elliott and Philby and Elliott and Lily, and an espionage story, and the structure just sort of evolved."
Author Ben Macintyre, meanwhile, spoke at the ITVX event about how he felt about the addition of Lily. "Although her character is invented, the investigation happened and it is the question of what Philby was really about and how this relationship between these two men played out that is still debated inside MI6 today," he says.
A Spy Among Friends is available to watch on ITVX.
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Freelance film & TV writer, Digital Spy
Critic and writer Jo Berry has been writing about TV and movies since she began her career at Time Out aged 18. A regular on BBC Radio, Jo has written for titles including Empire, Maxim, Radio Times, OK!, The Guardian and Grazia, is the author of books including Chick Flicks and The Parents’ Guide to Kids’ Movies.
She is also the editor of website Movies4Kids. In her career, Jo has interviewed well-known names including Beyonce, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Kiefer Sutherland, Tom Cruise and all the Avengers, spent many an hour crushed in the press areas of award show red carpets. Jo is also a self-proclaimed expert on Outlander and Brassic, and completely agrees that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
