‘To betray you must first belong. I never belonged.’ So said Kim Philby in defence of having secretly thrown in his lot with the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
Certainly his upbringing in India and his cussed father’s disaffection with Britain’s ruling elite made him something of an outsider among Britain’s entitled, but it’s the feeblest of defences.
It was this sort of feebleness that enraged John le Carré, who has far more entitlement to an ‘I didn’t belong’ defence and who, in a crowded field, loathed Philby probably more than anyone did.
His father, Ronnie Cornwell, was a conman and violent, philandering, time-serving rogue, whose wife, Olive, left the family home when David (his real name) was just five. ‘I don’t remember feeling any affection in childhood except for my elder brother,’ he once wrote.
As his longtime
