[3] A polymath of sorts with a brilliant and charming personality, he excels as a student, takes up remote languages with ease, and proves a somewhat gifted painter while at Oxford.
He is identified for recruitment in the Circus (John le Carré's lightly fictionalised version of MI6) by his tutor and acts in turn as a talent-spotter among his classmates, most notably Jim Prideaux, who also becomes his lover.
In World War II, Haydon builds a superb record in Nazi-occupied Europe and the Middle East, such that he elicits comparisons with Lawrence of Arabia.
In the early years of the Cold War, he limits his espionage activities to 'selected gifts of intelligence' that advance the Soviet cause over the American one without harming British interests.
In 1973, an indiscretion by a Soviet operative in Hong Kong confirms the existence of the mole to Oliver Lacon, the Civil Service overseer of the Circus in Whitehall.
[1][4][5] Philby, along with Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross, was part of a group of Soviet moles in Britain which later came to be known as the Cambridge Five.
[6] In describing Philby, Le Carre wrote that "to the very end, he expected and received the indulgence owing to his moderation, good breeding and boyish, flirtatious charm."
[7] The novel is set against a period of waning British influence on the world stage,[8] with USA and USSR emerging as the dominant superpowers, albeit with conflicting ideologies.
He claims that, although he was recruited by Soviet intelligence at university in the 1930s, he only became a serious agent for them following the Suez crisis when it became clear to him that Britain was no longer a world power and, in his view, was subservient to America.