Extra - E43 - Ben Macintyre - A Spy Among Friends

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2015

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

March 2014

In this EXTRA’s episode we bring you highlights of bestselling author, journalist and TV presenter Ben Macintyre’s talk on his book ‘A Spy Among Friends, Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal’.

Kim Philby was the most notorious British defector and Soviet mole in history. Agent, double agent, traitor and enigma, he betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians in the early years of the Cold War.

It is followed by the interview we recorded with Ben after his talk, that regular listeners will have heard in this month’s normal podcast, but we have added it here again for completion.

This talk was given in our Bletchley Park Presents series last year. Our 2015 season of talks is about to begin, starting with Michael Smith in March and already confirmed for later in the year are Victor Madeira, Jerry White, Taylor Downing & Sinclair McKay with more names yet to be announced.

For more information on these talks please go to www.bletchleypark.org and look in the What’s On section.

Picture of Ben Macintyre courtesy Jonathan Ring. Cover Image courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing.

#BletchleyPark, #BPark, #Spy, #ColdWar, #BenMacintyre1

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The From the home of the co-breakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:41.3	Welcome to another Bletchley Park, podcast Extra.
0:53.9	In this episode, we bring you highlights of the talk given by best-selling author, journalist and TV presenter Ben McIntyre, on his book, Aspire Among Friends, Kim Filby and The Great Betrayal. The highlights are followed by
0:55.7	the interview we were recorded with Ben after his talk. Our regular listeners will have heard
1:00.3	this in this month's normal podcast, but we've added it here just for completion, really.
1:06.4	Ben's talk was part of our Bletchley Park Presents series of talks last year.
1:16.2	Our 2015 season of talks is about to begin, starting with Michael Smith in March,
1:23.8	and already confirmed for later in the year, our Victor Madera, Jerry White, Taylor Downing and Sinclair McKay,
1:25.5	with more names yet to be announced.
1:33.4	If you'd like more information about these talks, then please go to www.bletchleypark.org and look in the what's on section.
1:41.0	Thank you very much for coming. It's lovely to be back in Bletchley Park, a place I have spent many happy hours filming and researching, and it's great to be back. So thank you.
1:48.0	And what a wonderful transformation there has been in this place, I have to say.
1:52.0	Many years ago, the FBI coined an acronym to describe the motivations of the spy, and that was mice. M-I-C-E which stands for money
2:03.4	ideology coercion and ego those are the four elements that are supposed to go
2:09.7	into the mental makeup of every spy and they are in different numbers and in
2:15.0	different sort of qualities and quantities.
2:25.4	But if you apply that acronym to Kim Filby, yet quite an odd result, because money never played any part in what Kim Filby did.
2:28.0	He was never paid a penny for his espionage.
2:36.6	Ideology was obviously central to what he did, and it was what he always maintained was the sort of prime motivator for his actions. Coercion, he was never coerced into doing anything at all. He was never blackmailed. He was
2:41.9	never forced. He was never trapped into doing what he did. And ego. Well, ego, I would argue,
2:47.8	ego is probably the most important thing element that went into understanding Kim Filthy.
	...

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