Chuckling over rude jokes in a dimly lit Mayfair pub, Nicholas Elliott loved the company of his friend and fellow MI6 agent – and trusted him implicitly.
When whispers broke that there was a traitor in the ranks, Elliott leapt to the defence of his pal.
But this was no ordinary friendship. And his pal was playing him all along – as he did so many others.
The chum? Kim Philby. Britain’s most notorious Cold War spy, responsible for the deaths of countless Western colleagues due to his leaked intelligence.
Double-agent Philby had worked for the communists since he was 22.
He used his position at MI6, where he rose through the ranks, to benefit the former Soviet Union at the expense of Britain.
Finally, after Elliott himself forced the truth in 1963, Philby fled to join his KGB paymasters in Moscow.
The womaniser would marry there – for the fourth time to Rufina Pukhova – and his adopted country even dedicated a stamp to him.
Elliott was shattered and never recovered from his ally’s betrayal of Britain and their friendship.
Now the relationship is the focus of new TV drama A Spy Among Friends, starring Damian Lewis as Elliott and Guy Pearce as the deceitful Philby. They have been filming in Romania and London.
Director Nick Murphy said: “How could I resist the opportunity to dramatise the true story of spies and lifelong friends, one of whom was betraying the other all along?
“A friendship that resulted in the gutting of British and American intelligence at the height of the Cold War and shaped the field of play for the dangerous game against Russia we’re still trying to win today.”
Philby’s biographer James Hanning said public schoolboys Elliott and Philby were from the same cloth. Friends for 30 years, they had a shared love for cricket and long lunches with a pink gin tipple.
Hanning said: “They had been in MI6 together for a long time.
“Elliott was an old-school gent – his father was the headmaster of Eton, he was very straight, conventional and amusing. He was keen on schoolboy jokes – him and Philby did a lot of drinking and giggling and gossiping over dirty jokes.
“They were very close. Elliott was younger than Philby and his protege in the war. He looked up to him. I am not sure he ever got over the embarrassment and shame of his deception.
“Philby rang rings around him.”
Damian Lewis, 50, says the drama is “an up-close look at friendship, a friendship blinded by love, class and membership to the right clubs and ended in betrayal and the deaths of thousands”. Pearce, 54, said he has always “been fascinated by the intriguing MI6 history”.
And few spy tales get more intriguing than this. By the end of World War Two, Philby – codenamed “Sonny” by the Soviets – was head of counter-espionage operations for MI6, responsible for combating Soviet subversion in Western Europe. In 1949 he went to Washington as chief MI6 officer.
In secret, he revealed Allied intelligence to the USSR that the UK and US were planning to send units into communist-leaning Albania.
The Americans grew increasingly suspicious, especially when traitors Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean fled to the USSR in 1951 – after Philby tipped them off the net was closing in. The incident forced Philby’s resignation.
He, Burgess and Maclean were part of the Cambridge Five spy ring – university contemporaries from the 1930s.
But MI5 spy-catchers failed to pin anything on Philby. Five years on, he landed a job as a journalist in Beirut and resumed his career as a Soviet spy.
As MI5 gathered mounting evidence, a chastened Elliott volunteered to go to Beirut to confront the traitor himself.
Their famous encounter in January 1963 still remains shrouded in mystery.
And although Elliott did get a written confession from his old pal, it was considered useless.
Biographer Hanning said: “Elliott told his colleagues that if Philby had any sense of shame and decency, the person he owed was him. So if anyone could get Philby to confess, it was him. It was quite emotional."
According to the book the show is based on, by author Ben Macintyre, Elliott said, "My God, I respected you, I hope you have the decency to know how much I hate you."
Hanning added: “He was incredibly angry. He offered him an immunity deal if Philby would tell him who else was recruited.
“He felt embarrassed in the eyes of the bosses and he thought he was most likely to get a deal out of him.”
But Philby fled days later, with some suggesting MI6 wanted him to run to avoid a humiliating trial in the UK.
According to Hanning’s book Love and Deception: Philby in Beirut, Elliott wrote a full account of his Lebanese trip, which was vetted by the intelligence services and never published.
Elliott’s son Mark confirmed: “Kim was as close a friend as my father ever had.
“My father told me he had written an autobiography. He had to get approval from ‘The Office’ for its publication. This they would not give.”
Elliott bitterly felt the betrayal until his death at the age of 77 in 1994. As Philby reached the rank of colonel in the KGB in Russia – where he lived until his death at 76 in 1988 – UK intelligence services gradually realised the names he had given Elliott were duds.
Hanning believed Philby never had any true respect for his friend, deliberately calling him “Nick” to his wife Eleanor, knowing he hated the abbreviation.
Hanning said: “Philby outwitted him at every turn and the confession was worthless in the end. They never questioned Philby again. They never got the chance. Philby got away. I am not sure Elliott ever got over that.”
- A Spy Among Friends is expected to air on Britbox in the autumn.
Love and Deception: Philby in Beirut by James Hanning is out now.
