Spy Among Friends (Macintyre)

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also, consider these talking points to help start a discussion for A Spy Among Friends (Spoiler Alert in effect—beware if you've not read the book.):

1. The central question raised by Macintyre's book, and by Nicholas Elliot, is how could—and why did—a man as Kim Philby, with a decidedly English upbringing and all of its prequisites, undertake a life of deception on such a grand scale? And why would he choose communism over capitalism? Talk about Philby: how would you describe him? What kind of person was he? What motivated him?

2. Talk about MI-6's Nicholas Elliot and the CIA's James Angleton, two of the sharpest, most wizened spies in the West. What about their personalities, backgrounds, or world views enabled both to be so thoroughly duped by Philby?

3. Philby himself says, in his own mind, he didn't betray Britain so much as remain intensely loyal to the USSR, an ideology he was firmly committed to. What do you think?

4. What about the Vermehrens, Erich and Elisabeth, the couple Elliot recruited in Turkey during the war? What motivated them...and how was their motivation different from  Kim Philby's? Consider, too, that their defection ended up destroying the members of their families by both Nazis (during the war) and Soviets (after the war). The bigger questions here is where does one's loyalties lie...or where should they lie?

5. One of the many ironies of the Philby's double agentry is that the better the information was that he provided his Soviet overseers, the less they trusted him. Why did Moscow distrust Philby during the early war years? Were the Soviets paranoid, an extension of Stalin's paranoia? Or did their mistrust make sense? What changed their minds?

6. What kind of individual does it take to be a spy, keeping secrets from everyone, including those you are most intimate with—spouses, family, and close friends? Could you ever work in intelligence, particularly undercover operations?

7. Talk about the role that social class played in this story. How did it aid Philby's ability to deceive his close friends and associates?

(Questions by LitLovers. Feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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