Dec 11 2024 6 mins 6
Listener questions from Kay Springham and Iain Campbell.
Recommendations:
Eamonn
The Only Girl In the Orchestra - Netflix
This short documentary celebrates trailblazing double bassist Orin O'Brien, the first woman to become a full-time member of the New York Philharmonic.
Angela
The man tasked with finding and killing alleged IRA informers was an informer all along. Reporter Mark Horgan traces the story of the secret British Army Agent known as Stakeknife.
David
My Silent War - The Autobiography of a Spy - Kim Philby
In the annals of espionage, one name towers above all others: that of H. A. R. "Kim" Philby, the ringleader of the legendary Cambridge spies.
A member of the British establishment, Philby joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1940, rose to the head of Soviet counterintelligence, and, as M16's liaison with the CIA and the FBI, betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians, fatally compromising covert actions to roll back the Iron Curtain in the early years of the Cold War.
Written from Moscow in 1967, My Silent War shook the world and introduced a new archetype in fiction: the unrepentant spy. It inspired John Le Carre's Smiley novels and the later espionage novels of Graham Greene. Kim Philby was history's most successful spy. He was also an exceptional writer who gave us the great iconic story of the Cold War and revolutionized, in the process, the art of espionage writing.
