New files show British Library sought to buy traitor Kim Philby’s archive

Newly-released government files show officials feared a backlash if the widow of notorious Cambridge spy ring member Kim Philby was paid to secure his archive for the British Library.

The library wanted to acquire the archive in a deal worth tens of thousands of pounds to his widow, according to papers released by the National Archives in Kew. Officials were horrified the library would be party to an arrangement enriching the family of a man whose treachery was blamed for countless agent deaths.

The library sought to reassure the government no public money would be involved and it was seeking a ‘benefactor’ to finance the purchase.

The then cabinet secretary Sir Robin Butler wrote: “I doubt whether this is a transaction the British Library should promote or even whether they should agree to receive the papers.”

Philby, who studied at Trinity College and was recruited by the KGB in the 1930s as part of the Cambridge spy ring, rose to become a senior MI6 officer before coming under suspicion in the 1950s.

The library was first approached by his Russian fourth wife, Rufina, in 1993, five years after his death and 30 years after he fled to Moscow amid fears he would finally be unmasked. She asked for £68,000 for the collection which included details of a course Philby had run for KGB agents preparing to deploy to the UK.

There were also letters from novelist Graham Greene, a friend from his MI6 days, and a history of the Communist Party signed by his fellow defector and double agent Guy Burgess under the alias ‘Jim Eliot’.

Michael Borrie, a senior library staff member, contacted the Cabinet Office to say its chief executive was keen to go ahead with the deal.

He wrote: “The chief executive feels these should be in a British public institution, provided they are what they purport to be, and have not been sanitised or made a vehicle for disinformation. He is not however willing to spend the grant-in-aid on them, and is looking for a benefactor. But we first must prevail on Mrs Philby to send them to London, for a thorough inspection.”

Mr Borrie did not say who they had in mind as a benefactor, but Cabinet Office officials believed they may have been thinking of Max Hastings, then editor of the Daily Telegraph – but there is nothing in the files to indicate why they thought this, or to suggest Sir Max (as he now is) was aware of it.

In the Cabinet Office, officials feared a public backlash even if no public money was involved.

One official, Jon Sibson, warned: “I suspect there might be something of an outcry if it became known that a public body was involved even in this way in a transaction which would enrich a traitor’s widow.”

Officials were wary of confronting the library which jealously guarded its operational independence, fearing it would lead to “a display of professional prickliness”.

Instead it was decided that Hayden Phillips, the top civil servant at the Department of National Heritage, should seek an informal meeting with Sir Anthony Kenny, the library’s chairman of trustees, to discreetly warn him off.

While Sir Anthony insisted he saw nothing wrong with the papers “finding their way” to the library, according to a note of the meeting, he accepted “there should be no possible question that the British Library had acted in any way to manipulate the acquiring of the archive”.

The approach had the desired effect and the library quietly dropped its interest. But Mrs Philby did not lose out – various items in the collection sold for £150,000 at auction at Sotheby’s.