James Hanning - Love and Deception: Philby in Beirut

Praise for Love & Deception: Philby in Beirut

In a masterly narrative, James Hanning has plotted through the intrigue to explain the murky and controversial climax of Britains biggest spy scandal

Tom Bower, author of The Perfect English Spy

James Hanning has identified a real gap in our understanding of Philby, giving life to figures such as Eleanor, the woman he fell for in Beirut, who have hitherto been ignored. His fresh and illuminating book fills in the often missed human dimension, and is full of new information and insights, bringing home the human cost of treachery

Andrew Lownie, author of Stalins Englishman

James Hannings deeply researched and fluently written book brings into focus for the first time the story of an intelligent and talented woman who tried and failed to lead a private life with the man she loved in the wilderness of mirrors that was Beirut at the height of the Cold War

Michael Holzman, author of Kim and Jim

I am always gripped by the Philby story, and James Hanning succeeds in putting new flesh on this fascinating period in his double life. Maximum betrayal, maximum stress, maximum misbehaviour, maximum booze I thoroughly recommend losing yourself in lives which I trust are far more terrifying than your own

Marina Hyde

James Hannings Love & Deception: Philby in Beirut is the first book in many years to disclose new information on the traitor-spy Kim Philby. Hanning has dug deeper than anyone since Phillip Knightley and E. H. Cookridge to expose the cover-ups, lies and propaganda surrounding Philbys final days in Beirut. A gripping tale of romance, intrigue and disloyalty

Charles Glass, author of They Fought Alone

Meticulously researched and elegantly written, James Hannings study of Philby in Beirut interweaves the personal and public life of the spy to create a fascinating read. It reveals a complex man who beneath a charming, vulnerable veneer was ultimately as duplicitous in his relationships with the women who loved him as he was to his country. Hanning evokes the cosmopolitan atmosphere of post-war Beirut with verve. His exploration of the Cambridge spy ring draws on extensive research including many interviews with people close to the characters involved

Rachel Trethewey

You may think the Philby saga has been mined to exhaustion but that is clearly not true. One of the most intriguing aspects is the final period in Beirut where he was still working as an MI6 stringer. Displaying his formidable skills as an assiduous researcher, James Hanning has continued digging and has discovered new gems that illuminate the tortured but living relationship between Kim and his wife, Eleanor, and the mystifying intrigues that surround Philbys last days in Beirut. Definitely a recommended read

Stephen Dorril, historian of MI6

A fascinating and brilliant story of the complex relationship between the master spy Kim Philby and his third wife, the American Eleanor Brewer. The author weaves a compelling narrative from their first meeting to the final denouement some years later. James Hanning has unearthed much new information and has written a book of real power

Richard Frost, editor of Tim Milne, Philbys oldest friend

Undaunted by the many books already written about the Soviet spy Kim Philby, James Hanning has come up with a hugely entertaining new volume. Love & Deception: Philby in Beirut is a racy confection of known facts and new insights, woven into a surprisingly sympathetic account of the alcohol-fuelled love affair that lit up Philbys last years in the West

George Carey, producer of The Spy Who Went into the Cold

I very much enjoyed the book... it kept getting better as it went along, providing illuminating insight into Kim and Eleanor. Certainly I found out quite a bit I did not know

Mark Elliott, son of Philbys MI6 colleague Nicholas Elliott

What more is there to be said about Kim Philby, the most notorious double agent in Cold War history? In James Hannings capable hands, a very great deal, it turns out. By focusing on the women in Philbys life, and especially his third wife Eleanor, Hanning has rendered an utterly fascinating and multi-layered portrait of one of the twentieth centurys most enigmatic figures. A must-read for those seeking to understand what makes spies tick and those who they seduce

Scott Anderson, author of The Quiet Americans and former reporter from Lebanon

The story of Kim Philbys seven-year sojourn in Beirut, and his subsequent flight to Moscow in January 1963, is perennially fascinating. So much is known, and yet so much remains obscure. James Hannings new book illuminates neglected aspects of this period and offers some convincing conjectures founded on evidence previously overlooked about what really took place

Adam Sisman

Enjoyable and atmospheric. A lovely evocation of impossibly exotic Beirut of the 1950s and 1960s, a vanished era

Simon Kuper, biographer of George Blake

An innovative and compelling account of the many loves and many betrayals of one of the worlds most celebrated and mysterious traitors of our time. Its a good read

Seymour Hersh

CORSAIR

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Corsair

Copyright James Hanning 2021

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Map by Barking Dog Art

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-4721-5593-1

Corsair

An imprint of

Little, Brown Book Group

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

An Hachette UK Company

www.hachette.co.uk

www.littlebrown.co.uk

To the people who live in Lebanon, and to my parents

Contents

The Middle East in the late 1950s

The scale of Philbys betrayal is barely calculable to anyone who has not been in the business. In Eastern Europe alone, dozens and perhaps hundreds of British agents were imprisoned, tortured and shot.

David Cornwell,
aka John le Carr, The Pigeon Tunnel

Kim Philby is perhaps the most famous name in twentieth-century espionage. Accounts of his life have concentrated, with good reason, on upbringing, his formative student experiences in the 1930s, his exploits during the war and the culmination of his career.

But his years in Beirut in the 1950s and 1960s call for a telling of their own. Following accusations of treachery against him in Britain, that period encompasses his curious return to his original career as a journalist, in the Middle East. Those years take in his mysterious contribution to the geopolitics of one of the worlds most unstable regions. But they also include elements in his personal life remarkably at odds with the man many think they know.

Hearing from those with whom he mixed socially in Beirut, another side of the hardened spy emerges sentimental, kind and emotionally vulnerable. What follows is based on existing histories and many new interviews, with and by those who knew him and his associates in Beirut and London. The intention is not to join in his denigration, though there is plenty to deplore, nor is it an attempt to excuse him, though his good points are not hidden. It is an attempt to offer a picture of the whole man.