{"id":1889,"date":"2015-09-29T13:27:41","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T19:27:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=1889"},"modified":"2015-09-29T13:27:41","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T19:27:41","slug":"a-spy-among-friends-kim-philby-and-the-great-betrayal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=1889","title":{"rendered":"A Spy Among Friends, Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Ben Macintyre, 2014, Crown Publishing, New York<\/p>\n<p>This story is fascinating as it probes how an upper-class gentleman in British Society could betray his country.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, it doesn&#8217;t give all the answers and leaves quite a bit to conjecture.\u00c2\u00a0 This may be due to the fact that so many of the records of the British Secret service pertaining to Philby remain sealed, but I would have liked to have come away from the book feeling a little more satisfaction that I understood Philby and the world he lived in.<\/p>\n<p>The book also tends to be a bit repetitive in that it depicts the social situation that Philby lived in as being absorbed in endless drinking and the telling of ribald stories.\u00c2\u00a0 This, too, is unfortunate as the same\u00c2\u00a0story repeated\u00c2\u00a0numerous times\u00c2\u00a0tends to get old.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, it is an interesting book.\u00c2\u00a0 I just felt it should have given me\u00c2\u00a0a bit more.<img decoding=\"async\" title=\"3 1\/2 stars\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/wp-includes\/images\/stars-3-5.gif\" alt=\"3 1\/2 stars\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Ben Macintyre, 2014, Crown Publishing, New York This story is fascinating as it probes how an upper-class gentleman in British Society could betray his country.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, it doesn&#8217;t give all the answers and leaves quite a bit to conjecture.\u00c2\u00a0 <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=1889\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[17,16],"class_list":["post-1889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-biography","tag-non-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1890,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889\/revisions\/1890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}