Kim Philby
Kim Philby was a British spy who worked for MI6. He also harboured communist sympathies and secretly did double dealings with the Russians during the Cold War.
Biography[[edit] | [edit source]]
Early life[[edit] | [edit source]]
Philby was born in India to English parents during the time of the British Raj. His father, St John Philby, travelled extensively in India and Arabia and worked in the Indian Civil Service.
Most of Philby's childhood was therefore spent in India. He played outside the Courthouse with Indian children. Philby himself had his skin darkened brown by the sun and spoke Hindi well enough to pass as a native. As such, he was given the nickname Kim, after the boy in one of Rudyard Kipling's stories.
Eventually, St John left the Indian Civil Service. Kim was sent to England to go to public school and saw little of his father afterwards. (PROSE: Endgame)
Cambridge[[edit] | [edit source]]
In the 1930s, Philby attended the University of Cambridge, alongside his friends Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. While at Cambridge, they converted to communism, as did many other students. Philby came to see the existing English system as "cruel, unjust and corrupt." (PROSE: Endgame)
In 1937, Philby and Burgess met the First Doctor, Steven Taylor and Vicki Pallister at Sedgwick College. The pair helped the time travellers uncover a plot by Sir Isaiah Hardy and Professor Linus Woolf to stunt humanity's scientific advances in an attempt to stave off war. Philby and Burgess, however, considered that they were right to be worried about the contemporary rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany. As such, the two considered forming an alliance with the college's new Soviet provost. (AUDIO: Entanglement)
Most students at Cambridge left communism behind after graduating. However, Philby, Burgess and Maclean remained committed to the ideology and became Russian agents. (PROSE: Endgame)
MI6[[edit] | [edit source]]
In 1939, Philby joined MI6. He expected an intelligence organisation in the British Secret Service to be managed very professionally but in reality, he found its organisation to be a shambles. (PROSE: Endgame)
He worked for MI6 throughout the Second World War and rose to prominent leadership positions. In 1944, he was the superior of Graham Greene. (PROSE: The Turing Test)
Philby married a woman named Aileen. Together they had a son named John.
At the end of the war, Philby became conscious of the crippled state of the British Empire and viewed the United Kingdom as a declining power. As such, he strengthened his ties with the Soviet Union, whose power was in ascendance.
With the onset of the Cold War, Philby became a part of a secret organisation named Tightrope, a group of spies from both the West and the East who sought to ensure neither side became engaged in open war. (PROSE: Endgame)
Dealings with the Eighth Doctor[[edit] | [edit source]]
In 1951, Philby was stationed in the United States in Washington DC while performing work for MI6. He returned to London for a few days after learning Donald Maclean was soon due to be arrested on charges of high treason. After reading a wartime report by Graham Greene, Philby stole the Eighth Doctor's TARDIS and blackmailed him into working for him.
With Philby as his spymaster, the Doctor warned Maclean of his imminent arrest and travelled with him to France, along with Guy Burgess. Maclean and Burgess disappeared after defecting to Moscow. Philby and the Doctor then travelled to DC, where they exposed Project Kali to the American Secret Service as a ploy by the Players to brainwash the President, Harry S. Truman, into sparking World War III.
Shortly after, Philby was recalled to England for questioning over the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean. En route, Philby tried to convince the Doctor to travel to Moscow to prevent the Players from using they same tactics they used on Truman on the more-unstable Joseph Stalin. The Doctor refused to play along with Philby any longer, so Philby passed on information to the British authorities which led to the Doctor's arrest. He fully expected the Doctor to escape police custody and, fleeing the law, defect to the Russians with little choice - expectations which proved correct.
The Doctor's journey to Moscow allowed Philby to frame him as the third man involved in the defection of Burgess and Maclean hunted by MI5 and MI6. With suspicion temporarily lifted from Philby himself, and the Players defeated in Washington and Moscow, Philby arranged to have the Doctor's records in both MI5 and MI6, and his criminal record, erased. He called the Doctor back to London and returned his TARDIS. Although Philby's own name was cleared for the moment, he knew he would remain under suspicion for a long time. (PROSE: Endgame)
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- He was played by Michael Bilton in the 1987 film The Fourth Protocol.
