Elliott, Nicholas. Elliott, Nicholas.
1. Never Judge a Man by His Umbrella. Salisbury: Michael Russell, 1991. [pb] London: Chatto and Windus, 1992.
According to Surveillant 2.2, Elliott was the "lifelong chum of -- and one of the debriefers of -- Kim Philby."
Defty, I&NS 10.1, remarks that Elliott "manages to recall his life from childhood to the present day without once revealing that he was ever in SIS." His account of his overseas' assignments "reveals more about the social whirl of a British diplomat than it does about the life of an intelligence officer.... Yet ... Elliott offers a balanced and incisive account of Germany's most successful agent operation in Turkey, the case of the German agent Cicero." Elliott's account of his "confrontation with Philby in Beirut ... offers little in the way of new information, and fails to resolve the controversy surrounding" that meeting.
2.. With My Little Eye: Observations Along the Way. Norwich: Michael Russell, 1993.
Surveillant 3.6 says that Elliott "discusses his assessment of the future of intelligence and gives his opinion on the Buster Crabb affair." He says Crabb "had already made one initial dive to examine the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze.... It is his belief that Crabb did not die from any actions from the Soviets ... [but] of respiratory problems ... or from equipment failure." There is also a "section on his interactions (favorable) with James Angleton ... [and some] final reflections on Philby."
Defty, I&NS 10.1, sees nothing in this book "to concern the guardians of official secrecy, and unfortunately very little to interest the academic reader." The first essay "offers a sterling defense of British intelligence, pointing out both the lessons learnt from past failures, and the continued utility of intelligence in the post-Cold War world."
According to Gordievsky, The Spectator, 5 Feb. 1994, "Elliott's book is full of short, elegant vignettes, recollections and some very eccentric friends, amusing anecdotes, jokes and comic quotations."
Hamrick, S.J. Deceiving the Deceivers: Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, and Guy Burgess. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.
According to DKR, AFIO WIN 44-04 (29 Nov. 2004), the author argues that "British intelligence knew far earlier [than the spring of 1951] that Maclean was Moscow's agent and concealed that knowledge in a 1949-1951 counterespionage operation that deceived Philby and Burgess. Hamrick also finds evidence that in 1949-1950 the British ran a disinformation op that used Philby to mislead Moscow about British-U.S. retaliatory capability in case of Soviet aggression against Western Europe."
Bath, NIPQ 21.1 (Mar. 2005), calls this work "an interesting, if not totally convincing, exercise in theory." On the other hand, Kruh, Cryptologia 29.2 (Apr. 2005), Hamrick presents "compelling evidence" regarding the use of Philby in a disinformation initiative against the Soviets. The author "breaks new ground in reinterpreting ... the final espionage years of three famous spies."
To Goodman, I&NS 21.1 (Feb. 2006), this book is "based on conjecture." The author's "reading of the primary sources ... is fundamentally and unacceptably flawed." The reviewer concludes that the book's content is "pure fabrication." Similarly, West, IJI&C 19.1 (Spring 2006), finds "serious and glaring faultlines crisscrossing Hamrick's landscape." He concludes that the author's "elaborate 'deception' ... is but a fleeting mirage."
Lefebvre, H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews, Feb. 2005 [http://www.h-net.org], comments that the author "is particularly adept at finding holes and fallacies of omission or assumption in the material he perused. To make his case, however, he must fill in the blanks through logical deduction, often without any supporting and corroborating evidence other than the coherence of his propositions."
Knightley, Phillip. Philby: The Life and Views of the KGB Masterspy. London: Deutsch, 1988. The Master Spy: The Story of Kim Philby. New York: Knopf, 1988.
Clark comment: In this book, Knightley revisits a subject -- the treachery of H.A.R. ("Kim") Philby -- that he first worked on 20 years earlier [see Bruce Page, David Leitch, and Phillip Knightley, Philby: The Spy Who Betrayed a Generation (London: Deutsch, 1968)]. This time, however, he is newly armed with information (such as it is) from one-on-one interviews with Philby just weeks before the latter's death.
Sexton finds that this biography is "[w]ell worth reading," but adds that it "should be used with caution." Caution is also urged by Parrish, I&NS 4.4, who notes that "the reader cannot forget that the interviewer's quarry was not only a professional liar but a master of that profession."
Marks, Kathy. "Graham Greene 'Knew Philby Was a Traitor.'" Electronic Telegraph, 16 Dec. 1996. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk]
In a December 1996 edition of the BBC's "Bookworm" program, "Prof Norman Sherry, Greene's official biographer, says: 'I believe he felt he had to leave [MI6 in 1944] because he knew his friend was spying for another country.'
"Philip Knightley ... [also] believes that Greene resigned in order to avoid betraying his friend, as well as to protect himself from being implicated in any future scandal....
"However, the suggestion that Greene left MI6 because of suspicions about Philby was discounted ... by Rupert Allason, the Conservative MP and espionage expert.... Mr Allason said he believed that Greene's reasons for resigning were more prosaic. He said: 'It was tedious, boring work. It involved commuting to St Albans every day and working with ghastly colleagues.'"
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