Harold Adrian Russell “Kim” Philby

January 1, 1912 — May 11, 1988

Among the “Cambridge Five,” none is perhaps as notorious as Kim Philby. Nicknamed by his father after the main character of a Rudyard Kipling adventure novel, Philby was recruited by Soviet intelligence while a student at Trinity College, Cambridge in the early 1930s. He and his fellow spies would later smuggle thousands of documents and crucial pieces of intelligence to the Soviets, which directly strengthened the Soviets’ negotiating position at Yalta. But Philby’s life transected that of one of the daughters at Yalta much earlier. Among debutante Sarah Churchill’s suitors was a brilliant young Reuters journalist named Dick Sheepshanks. In 1937, Sheepshanks went to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War, where he met fellow correspondent Philby. One day, Sheepshanks, Philby, and two other correspondents were in a car when it was rocked by an explosion. Philby was the only survivor. Some have theorized that Sheepshanks discovered that Philby was a Soviet spy, so Philby orchestrated the explosion to kill him. Though unlikely, we may never know the truth…

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