Richard Greene: Graham Greene and the Spies

hello welcome to the 2020 anthony burgess lecture  it's going to be delivered by professor richard   green who is the author of this new biography  of graham greene just published russian roulette   the american title is the quiet englishman  but it's the same book on both sides of the   atlantic heavily recommended now graham green and  anthony burgess have a long history which goes   back to their first meeting in 1957 when green met  burgess uh berdis had just come back from malaya   and he brought a present from a friend of greens  and also a copy of his first novel which he   inscribed to green and then a few years later he  dedicated one of his early novels devil of a state   to graham green and they remained in contact  thereafter and until towards the end of green's   life when there was a final and catastrophic  falling out however green is one of the reasons   why burgess became a writer and also one of the  reasons why he chose his publisher because william   heinemann had been green's publishers since  the 1920s and when burgess started writing in   the 1950s he sent his two unpublished novels  to heinemann who rejected them and he didn't   send them anywhere else he was determined  to be published by green's publisher and so   eventually time for a tiger which was his third  novel was published as his first novel in 1956.   now richard greene who's going to tell us about  graham greene and his history in the world   of espionage he's a very distinguished writer  he's professor of english at toronto university   he's also a prize-winning poet he's been awarded  the governor general's prize in canada and he's   previously written a life of edith sitwell and  he's produced an edition of graham green's letters   a book called a life in letters his new biography  i would say is easily the best life of graham   greene yes i have read all the others and this is  the best book about green that's been attempted   so far and richard is delivering his lecture sadly  from toronto sadly for us because he wanted to be   here in person but he's going to give the lecture  from his home in toronto professor richard greene the international anthony burgess  foundation is a unique and wonderful   organization i'm very grateful to its director  professor andrew biswell and his colleagues   for inviting me to give this lecture i'm  very conscious that i follow in the footsteps   of day margaret drapple and jonathan  meads and am humbled by that knowledge   so i'm fortunate that the pandemic forces us to  record this lecture as i would love to meet more   of the friends and supporters of the foundation  i hope i will be able to do that before long   today i want to speak to you about graham greene  and the spies but it is only fair that i should   start with anthony burgess it's well known that  the two novelists had a public spat in june   1988 following burgess's tart comments on a french  television program about green's age and his years   of correspondence with the defector kim philby who  had just died green wrote burgess a pair of angry   letters on the same day recommending in one that  you see a psychiatrist and that was that after   many years of pleasant if not close association  the two had nothing more to do with each other   and yet burgess was in effect asking a question  that was on many people's minds graham greene   had been philby's staunchest defender in the  west since the time of his defection in 1963.   he had written an introduction to philby's memoir  by silent war and eventually engaged in the   correspondence with him which actually amounted  to perhaps just a dozen letters on each side since   1986 green had made a series of highly publicized  visits to the soviet union which had included   meetings with philby burgess like everyone else  wanted to know what graham greene was up to of course burgess had long been interested in the  older novelists involvement in the secret world   and was a great admirer of his spy novels for  example when the human factor came out in 1978   he wrote in the observer let me say at once that  the human factor is as fine a novel as he has   ever written concise ironic acutely observant  of contemporary life funny shocking above all   compassionate will carr the deputy director  of the foundation tells me that much later   after the quarrel he did find fault with the book  specifically on the subject of lancashire hotpot   in his novel the human factor mr graham green  has the effrontery to add carrots to the dish   he promised to remove those carrots in a reissue  of the book but they are still readily and wrongly   there redly and wrongly there is a great phrase  and might also apply to kim philby's presence at   mi6 but we'll come back to that in any event that  particular novel the human factor is the story of   what green thought a morally justified defection  indeed it was something of a thought experiment   the double agent morris castle is a conservative  character and actually opposed to marxism   he leads a sober life with a mortgage a dog and  a bicycle he had once been stationed in south   africa where he fell in love with an african  woman named sarah and so was blackmailed by the   security services there he returned to london  protected by a diplomatic passport but she had   to escape with the aid of communist rebels out  of love for her and gratitude to her protectors   he begins leaking material to the kgb culminating  in an appalling plan to back the apartheid   regime with american nuclear weapons once that  document is leaked he must take refuge in moscow   and so is separated from sarah green spoke of  the work as a sympathetic study of treachery   in the rest of this talk i want to tell  as concisely as i can the story of green's   involvement with mi6 and his dealings  with men who turned out to be soviet moles   i want to begin by disappointing some of those  listening as i never did find anything to suggest   that green himself was working for the soviets  he was a contrarian with a taste for paradox   and a sympathy for outsiders and he was never  finished fighting the demons of his childhood   these things generally explain his sometimes  startling public statements and actions green was recruited to mi6 also known  as the secret intelligence service or   sis in the summer of 1941 and perhaps it is  helpful to bear in mind that this service   gathers foreign intelligence  and is very different from mi5   which investigates subversion and threats to  internal security green disliked mi5 very much   seeing in its officers a species of school prefect  and made them the villains of the human factor   responsible for killing a man who is  incorrectly suspected of being a mole after a period of training green was sent to  west africa in early 1942 a posting for which   he had some qualification as the author of journey  without maps about a trek through the back country   of sierra leone and liberia to investigate modern  slavery on american-owned rubber plantations   he had a special knowledge of the region  which was otherwise hard to come by   stationed in freetown he was provided with  cover as a cid special branch officer and his   time there would later provide the inspiration  and the setting for the heart of the matter   in truth graham greene was a minor  figure in british intelligence   but freetown was a fairly important posting since  the mediterranean was closed convoys to egypt and   north africa had to sail south towards the cape of  good hope with freetown as the main port call at   the same time there was some threat of attack by  vichy forces across the border in french guinea so   green's job required him to monitor shipping and  through a very small network of agents keep track   of any french troop movements in land he searched  portuguese ships for contraband diamonds used   in war industries he interrogated a  suspected spy just once and hated it   in the course of his posting green managed to get  into a row with his superior stationed in lagos   so that he was then placed directly  under the command of london   and so was henceforth without knowing  it getting his orders from kim philby after a little over a year green was recalled to  england to work in the iberian subsection of sis   section 5 dedicated to counter intelligence  since the summer of 1941 this subsection had   been headed by philby green took charge of the  portugal desk in the section five headquarters   first at glen almond house and edwardian mansion  in saint albans and then from late july 1943 at 14   ryder street off st james street in london the  key point about green's work in the subsection   was that the supposedly neutral salazar regime  in portugal like that of franco in spain was   sympathetic to the axis and allowed the obvier the  german intelligence service to operate on its soil   however the salazar regime was not as  openly pro-nazi as the spanish government   so section 5 counterintelligence had to conduct  itself more cautiously there for fear of driving   the portuguese further into the nazi camp  what did green's job involve in this unit   first he performed the task a very tiresome one of  compiling a large index known as the purple primer   of enemy intelligence agents officers and contacts  in portugal philby wrote an introduction is   deputy tim milne who is the nephew of a.a milne  updated and enlarged it and later wrote in his   memoir perhaps this entitles me to go down in  history as the co-author with graham greene and   h.r philby of a volume privately printed  in limited edition with numbered copies much of green's work would have involved signals  intelligence both enigma material from bletchley   park and another kind drawn from the broken  hand ciphers of german intelligence whereas in   sierra leone green was searching ships and making  forays to the border at saint albans he was tied   to a desk pouring over intercepts as well as a  certain amount of intelligence from human sources   one visitor to spain and portugal whom the  subsection tracked carefully was admiral wilhelm   canaris head of the opvair philby proposed simply  tossing a couple of grenades into his hotel room   but his superiors rejected this plan since they  knew that canaris was secretly opposed to hitler   wanted an early peace and might be counted on  to lead a coup indeed philby's desire to get   rid of canaris was precisely in line with soviet  plans to come as far west into europe as possible   something a coup followed by a negotiated peace  would prevent phil be subordinate green caused   trouble for canaris personally by sending word of  his locations to the portuguese police arrested   as part of stouffenberg's plot against hitler  canaris was executed by garating in april 1945. green was involved with running some double agents  among them one codenamed joseph a russian seaman   who had been trained as a spy by the  soviets but then lost touch with them   mi6 ran him against the japanese in lisbon for  two years from home ports in newcastle and glasgow   with green handling and interpreting much  of the hand cipher traffic relating to him   in the file on this case there is a curious  correspondence between green and one of joseph's   case officers about a suspected spy aboard a  ship headed to britain who could be identified   by his possession of four canaries in a letter  of 29th december 1943 green perhaps thinking of   his children added your secretary has promised  to reserve me one canary now tim butcher who   has written a book about green's travels in africa  and a very good one wonders whether these canaries   might have something to do with a discrete  effort by green and others to get around philby   and make contact with canaris the history of intel  the historian of intelligence nigel west however   thinks not his view is essentially that even in  the secret world sometimes the canaries are real   the iberian subsection had some involvement in one  of the war's most important pieces of strategic   deception the garbo case green's own involvement  in this affair was slight but the story and others   similar to it remained with him and helped to  shape the plot of our man in havana in 1958   this case was unraveled by nigel west in january  1941 a spaniard named juan pujols garcia who hated   hitler offered himself to the british embassy  in madrid as a willing spy against the germans   but they rebuffed him he then went to the  german embassy and volunteered to go to britain   as a german journalist and spy on behalf of the  nazis by october he was in portugal sending the   germans bogus reports concocted with the aid of a  beedicker a bradshaw and an ordinance survey map   in his first message he claimed the assistance  of a klm pilot in fact a klm pilot was known to   the british to be a spy in another message he  described the convoy of ships from liverpool to   malta with a freakish resemblance one that  actually sailed intercepting these reports   british intelligence at first believed that  a master spy was at work he then contacted an   american official in lisbon who took him seriously  just as the british finally worked out that he was   really operating from portugal he was taken by  ship to gibraltar then flown to england in april   1942 having been originally code named bovrel he  was renamed garbo in tribute to his acting skills   under the guidance of his mi5 case officer thomas  harris he fed a great deal of false information   to the germans and convinced them of the reality  of 26 invented sub-agents he was a prized asset   of german intelligence and just before d-day a  message of his had great influence with the high   command hoping to convince them that landings at  normandy were a diversion and that the real attack   would come near calais indeed that message was  initialed by field martial yodel and presented to   hitler a hero to both sides juan pujol garcia was  secretly awarded both an mbe and an iron cross during his time in the counterintelligence unit  green struck up friendships with two of the five   members of the cambridge spy ring at a glance  green and the cambridge spies have privileged   backgrounds in common but green saw it differently  he wrote all five concerned were at cambridge long   after i was at oxford generations at university go  in three years i belong to the 1922 generation and   kim and the others belonged to a much later one  at the beginning of the 30s it was then apparent   that germany was the main threat and the hunger  marchers were busy it was more natural in the   early thirties to side with our possible ally  russia his friendship with john karen cross   a scotsman began in june 1943 with them taking  the same train to saint albans where green came   upon him reading one of his novels at saint albans  karen cross was technically green subordinate but   was shunted off to other work a fondness developed  between them and green dubbed him claymore   however having been recruited by the soviets in  1937 karen cross did a great deal of harm fluent   in german he was sent in 1942 to work on ultra  decrypts at bletchley and provided the soviets   with thousands of documents when the war was  over he entered the civil service and provided   the soviets with an array of sensitive military  information including nuclear secrets these   things are especially evident if one looks at the  huge mitrokin archive brought to the west by a   defecting kgb officer vasily mitrogen and brought  into print by the historian christopher andrew once guy burgess and donald mclean defected in  1951 karen cross was suspected of treason and   forced out of the civil service he confessed  to mi5 in 1964. shortly after anthony blunt's   exposure karen cross was publicly identified  as the fifth man in the cambridge spy ring   in the 1980s he turned to graham green for help  with a defensive memoir and with his problems   of residency in france sending him many  long letters always sympathetic to outcasts   and underdogs green tried to help it has been  suggested to me by a former intelligence officer   that green may have been encouraged by the service  to remain friendly with karen cross in later years   so that he would feel more assured of a  warm reception from british intelligence   if he felt like confessing more extensively  or he was willing to name other traitors on a day-to-day basis in 1943 and four greens  saw far less of karen cross than of kim philby   and indeed they became drinking companions  philby's own story is well known   convinced of marxism as a student he was recruited  by the nkvd in austria in 1934 at the instruction   of his controllers he recreated himself as a man  of the right going to spain for the times in 1937   where he wrote admiringly about franco brought  into the intelligence services by guy burgess he   moved to sis section 5 counterintelligence in 1941  where he was given charge of the iberian section   under felix cowgill in the following year he was  made responsible also for italy and north africa   including green station in sierra leone while  at saint albans he poured over the archives   especially the two-volume source book detailing  all sis agents in the soviet union with war ending   german espionage was fading and was necessary  to refocus counterintelligence on the soviets   so a new unit section 9 was set up filby told his  controllers what was going on and they insisted   that he get himself appointed head of this  new section a job that would ordinarily have   gone to felix cowgill the capable but sometimes  cantankerous head of section 5. phil be set to   work in march and finally got the appointment in  september while cowgill was traveling in italy on   his return cargill protested in vain to see the  chief of mi6 stuart menzies and resigned shortly   after himself a soviet agent philby was now in  control of the efforts of mi6 against soviet spies in the midst of this intrigue graham greene  left his position in mi6 indeed his resignation   coincided with d-day and it is difficult to  understand how a trusted intelligence officer   could leave the service at that moment 24 years  later greene offered this account in his preface   to philby's memoir i saw the beginning of this  affair section nine indeed i resigned rather than   accept the promotion which was one tiny cog in the  machinery of his intrigue i attributed it then to   a personal drive for power the only characteristic  in philby i thought disagreeable i am now glad   that i was wrong he was serving a cause and not  himself and so my old liking for him comes back   green like to provoke his readers here he suggests  that an ambitious bureaucrat was somehow worse   than an agent betraying many people to their  deaths in the service of joseph stalin so why   did graham greene leave section 5 in june 1944 one  possibility is that philby tried to recruit him as   an agent and green chose to quit rather than turn  philby in or perhaps he did make a report and was   then removed from section five so that philby  would not sniff out what had happened nigel west   thinks this scenario very improbable since philby  had tried independent recruitment once before   and it nearly destroyed his relationship with  the nkvd and of course why approach graham greene   rather than his superior tim milne who would have  been a much more useful recruit philby was himself   far too valuable an asset to be allowed  to take any such risks for so little gain milton maintains that is wrong to see philby  as trying to take over section 5 in early 1944 in september 1943 calgal himself promoted philby  to a position from which he controlled much of   section 5 anyway and milne was made head of the  iberian subsection by the late winter philby's   attention was on section nine that's the new  section to pursue the soviets green was offered a   routine promotion and he took philby milne and an  administrative officer to lunch at the cafe royal   to persuade them to leave him in his current  post and then he resigned all together a number of writers have proposed that graham  greene somehow saw into kim philby's heart   and mind and perceived that he was leading a  double life to my mind this is a sentimental   even bizarre reading of the evidence in order  to set up an interpretation of the character   of harry lyme in the third man green had actually  been describing betrayals of mentors and dominant   friends since his first novel the man within and  having experienced betraying betrayal and bullying   in school he did not need philby to inspire such a  plot many years later tim milne wrote a memoir of   philby which could not be published until 2014.  in it he says that after seeing green's account   of his resignation he asked for details their  letters are actually preserved at boston college   green said he could remember nothing specific  just an impression of ambition and intrigue on   the part of philby it is entirely possible then  that green had read subsequent revelations about   philby into his memories of 1944. simpler answers  present themselves green was a man easily bored   he had been doing desk work for a year at a very  modest salary and was tired of it by the first of   may 1944 the political intelligence department  of the foreign office offered him a job with a   promise to send him to france following the  invasion the kind of adventure he always   craved the most likely explanation of green's  desire to leave mi6 for a less demanding position   lies in a script writing contract he signed with  mgm on the 3rd of february 1944 providing him   with 12 weeks of work in each of two years at  the very handsome rate of 250 pounds per week   mgm wanted to get green working as soon as  possible so included a requirement that once   hostility has ended quote he will use his best  endeavors to obtain his release and discharge   from compulsory national service at the earliest  possible date he was also required to keep mgm   apprised of the steps he was taking to obtain  release and act on any suggestions they might give it seems that kim philby's conduct played at  most a minor part in green's departure from   section 5 counterintelligence green did take the  job offer by the foreign office but they reneged   on the promise of sending him to france he did  return to scriptwriting and after the war took   up a job in publishing of course one rarely  leaves the intelligence services altogether   and in the years that followed green took on  occasional tasks for sis notably in vietnam   where as the historian kevin ruain has shown he  scouted possible catholic leaders to take over   from the french colonizers and so keep the country  out of communist hands on one occasion he was sent   with a secret message to ho chi minh the contents  of which are still not known and yet it seems that   green had little or no contact with kim philby  for many years in 1951 philby's mask fell away   working in washington he warned guy burgess that  donald mclean was under suspicion and this tip-off   led to the escape of both men to the soviet  union in a sense philby was left holding the bag   according to philip knightley he was brought  to a form of trial by mi5 in november 1951.   those present thought him guilty but there  was just not enough evidence to convict him   he was however forced to resign from the  foreign office and he later said that   he ended his friendship with graham greene  at this time in order to spare him trouble in 1955 j edgar hoover of the fbi leaked  information to journalists that philby   had tipped off burgess and mclean in 1951  allowing them to escape to moscow and so   philby became known to the world in graham  green's phrase as the third man of the spy ring   the foreign secretary harold macmillan  disliked the intelligence services   and was not much interested in the  case in exchange for philby's sacking   he was still technically on the books of sis  and reorganization of the service macmillan   made a statement to the house of commons on the  7th of november 1955 clearing him of suspicion   phil be followed with a circus-like circus-like  press conference from his mother's flat   in which with a smirk and a tongue rolling  inside his cheek he answered many of the   questions with no comment and made solemn  references to the official secrets act   with the help of his closest friend in the service  nicholas elliott philby became a correspondent   in beirut for the observer and the economist in  mid-1956 in 1960 elliot by then head of station   in beirut brought him back as an agent perhaps  in order to have him feed traceable information   to the soviets thus revealing him as a traitor  in any event evidence against him was mounting   and even eliot finally agreed that his friend  must be guilty a highly placed kgb figure anatoly   golitzen brought clues concerning the identity of  soviet agents when he defected to the west in 1961   and an old friend of philby's name flora  solomon revealed his early communist sympathies   elliot was sent to confront philby in  january 1963 and their meetings have   been much written about at first philby  remarked i rather thought it would be you   troubling comment contained a hint that some other  moles still active in the service had warned him   to expect an inquisitor elliot offered immunity if  he told all he knew philby confirmed that he had   been a soviet agent and provided a two-page  confession which elliot took back to london philby then turned to his controllers who  got him onto a freight or bound for odessa   and by the end of the month he was in moscow  the sudden disappearance of a long suspected   traitor became international news and indeed  part of a huge controversy concerning spies   it even coincided with the pro-fumo affair on the  first of july 1963 edward heath as lord privy seal   confirmed in the house of commons that philby  had indeed spied for the soviet union and that   he was now likely in an eastern bloc country there  followed the scouring of the intelligence service   services and michael sheldon tells us that graham  greene as a former associate of the defector   was interviewed by mi5 and cleared of complicity  though the inter interviewer felt he knew more   than he was saying it would have been  entirely in character for the contrary   often to find graham green to be a resistant  witness especially under aggressive questioning   if the interviewer tried to push him around he  would push back harder that was his personality   indeed he despised the investigators later  remarking i don't think i've ever had a friend   in mi5 thank god presumably his distaste for that  branch of service went back to their proposal to   arrest him over our man in havana published in  1958 as it gave an exact account of the dealings   of a head of station with an agent in the field  when he heard of the plan to put the novelist on   trial at the old bailey sir dick franks then  head of mi6 just laughed at off his nonsense   and yet green himself probably took it seriously  so when the time came green bearing a grudge told   the inquisitors no more about his old friend than  he had to he's not going to do their job for them in the lost boyhood of judas christ was betrayed  graham greene often quoted these lines from the   irish poet ae and they may have guided his  first public comment on philby's defection   in a satirical piece called a third man  entertainment on security in room 51   which came out in the sunday times just after  edward heath's statement to the house of commons   greene declared a great affection for philby he  spoke of their working together in an edwardian   house in rider street that their service shared  with the oss the forerunner of the cia green asked   which of us then were betraying secrets to  our american allies which of us in the far   past at oxford and cambridge have been  corrupted by the capitalist way of life   in a sense green's defense of philby began in  the dormitory at birkhamsted school where he had   been caught between loyalty to the other boys and  loyalty to his father the headmaster out of which   emerged a personal mythology concerning trust  and betrayal growing up under the shadow of the   great war he found nationalism distasteful  and he preferred loyalty to individuals   over loyalty to states he absorbed a long-standing  catholic disdain for american forms of culture and   government as one of the soulless outcomes of the  enlightenment and his anti-americanism grew most   acute after his sojourns in vietnam he felt that  american meddling in foreign countries was as bad   as that of the russians so he was not going to  be sanctimonious if an old friend happened to   have looked east when most britons were looking  west in addition to all this green light fights   and he liked underdogs and he despised mi5  he was going to stand up for kim philby although graham greene is better known for  his anti-americanism he became at this time   in his paradoxical way increasingly active  in his protests against violations of human   rights in the soviet sphere and while he had  been making quiet appeals over the years for   various dissidents among them boris pasternack  he became more vocal in the 1960s for example   he was very concerned about the cases of andrei  synovsky and julie daniel a pair of satists whose   works were smuggled abroad and published in  1965 they were arrested for soviet activities   anti-soviet activities they were then tried and  sentenced to hard labor in september 1967 green   wrote to the secretary of the union of writers and  asked that any royalties owed to him and any money   being held for him be paid to the wives of the  two imprisoned writers at the same time he wrote a   letter to the times about the imprisoned satirists  remarking accurately that if it had been sent to   pravda or zvezdia it would not have been published  he outlined his decision concerning the royalties   and stated that he could no longer visit the  soviet union of which he had such happy memories   while these men were in jail greene was narrowing  his protest to a question of human rights   and did not want his words to be seized upon  by the americans so added these wild remarks   there are many agencies such as radio free europe  which specialize in propaganda against the soviet   union i would say to these agencies that this  letter must in no way be regarded as an attack   upon the union if i had to choose between life  and the soviet union and life in the united   states of america i would certainly choose the  soviet union just as i would choose life in cuba   to life in those southern american republics like  bolivia dominated by the northern neighbor or life   in north vietnam to south vietnam but the greater  affection one feels for any country the more   one is driven to protest against any failure of  justice there this statement was made while in his   fiction he was working out what he took to be the  holy moral grounds for morris castle's defection   even so the line of thought is unreasonable if  graham greene had been a russian writer he would   long since have vanished into the bullock and  he know and he knew it this statement though   very ill judged had a clear purpose he wanted to  make sure that his protest on behalf of daniel and   was useless for american propaganda  unfortunately he was never able to live it down and yet green was as good as his word and refused  to visit the soviet union until the gorbachev   years owing to the treatment of dissidents in my  new biography of graham green i go into various   instances of how green lead protests on behalf  of dissidents how do we make sense of all these   contradictions to put it simply he hated both the  american and soviet systems and was not going to   align himself with either as we know in later  years he attempted to break out of the east-west   paradigm by aligning himself with countries in  the developing world the chile of salvador allende   the panama of omartorios and the nicaragua of the  sandinistas but that is a subject for another day   in later years green clung to a  personal loyalty to kim philby   or perhaps just to the idea of kim philby  as he had not spoken to him in years   he provided an introduction to philby's book  my silent war and received a note of thanks   then nothing more in the mid 1970s he fell  in with a documentary maker called laszlo   robert who was also a hungarian intelligence  agent specializing in catholic targets   and this man attempted unsuccessfully to  broker a meeting between green and philby   greene reported these contacts to morris old  castle an old friend who had become head of   mi6 and it turned out that laszlo was already  known to them as a spy nonetheless green was   anxious to make contact with philby however he  could not go to the soviet union owing to its   treatment of dissidents and obviously philby  could not come to the west for fear of arrest in early 1978 philby sent green a postcard  from havana and so opened a correspondence   there weren't many letters and when he  received one green usually passed it on   to mi6 through his brother-in-law rodney dennis  who had been a senior figure in the service   as green put it to burgess in one of his angry  letters of june 1988 you must be very naive   if you think our letters were clandestine  on either side the kgb and mi6 were both   involved in the correspondence and at one point  it appeared that the russian service was passing   a note to the british concerning its disapproval  of the recent invasion of afghanistan filby called   it an infernal business and added i need hardly  tell you that i am very unhappy about it what may   surprise you is that i have met no one here who  is happy about it it was most indiscreet to speak   of the mood of the kgb and philby would only  have done it with the approval of the superiors   green and dennis took the view that the kgb  was signaling to the west however deniably   its disapproval of the war begun by leonard  brezhnev rodney dennis passed on their   thoughts about the letter to sir dick franks  who had succeeded oldfield as the head of mi6 and yet the connection between green and philby  was just a matter of letters from time to time   mixing personal recollections comments on  literature and discussion of world affairs   there is no real evidence that they met in  person until the emergence of mikhail gorbachev   as general secretary in 1985. at about that time  the writers union elected the novelist genrik   borovich as its secretary for foreign affairs and  he approached various foreign authors among them   graham greene urging them to visit the reformed  soviet union of course this man borovich was also   an agent of the kgb specializing in disinformation  and it seems that he was up to something   kim philby was never fully trusted by the kgb  and was given no meaningful work during his first   decade in russia by the late 1980s his value  as an intelligence asset was utterly exhausted   it seems that borovic was using a reunion with  philby as bait to bring green to the soviet union   he tried something like it with david cornwell  who writes as john le carre who he made a visit   to moscow and there was approached by borovich  offering a meeting with philby cornwell rejected   the suggestion with scorm and for his efforts was  subjected to a full body search on his way home   in any event green made five visits to  the soviet union between 1986 and 1988   spending a good deal of time with philby on four  of them by the time of the fifth philby was dead   the first visit in september 1986 bought green to  the book line flat philby shared with his fourth   wife rufina near pushkin square in moscow philby  said right away please graham don't ask me any   questions about the past obviously he did not  care to be questioned but perhaps he was also   reminding green that the flat was bugged from  the soviet side this visit probably had nothing   to do with actual intelligence gathering but  with symbolism and public relations according   to borovich this visit was approved by  the leading reformer alexander yakovlev   soon to be promoted to the politburo and  cleared by mikhail gorbachev over the   objections of old time apparatchiks of course  in the background according to david cornwell   raisa gorbachev often had a hand in bringing  foreign cultural figures to the soviet union green made a return visit five months later  in the depths of a russian winter for which   he brought neither hat nor boots and had  to be guided by hand through the snow   at philby's flat he remarked you and i are  suffering from the same incurable disease   old age he complained how difficult it was now  even to take a shower eight years younger than   green philby was facing greater difficulties he  had emphysema and a failing heart green's other   purpose on this occasion was to participate  in a grand forum for a nuclear free world   and the survival of mankind featuring 600 writers  intellectuals and activists from around the world   it was to be a showcase for the reformed soviet  union even as on the streets reactionary elements   of the kgb were beating up protesters and  journalists including the guardians martin walker   as perhaps the most important living  writer from the english-speaking world   green was given special treatment from the  second most influential member of the politburo   jagor ligachoff an ally and later rival of  gorbachev's who specifically invited green to   return and spend time in siberia where he himself  had been born but that was not all participants in   the round table met gorbachev himself when green  approached in a small group gorbatov gorbachev   shook his hand and said rather mysteriously in  english i have known you for some years mr greene   it is not clear whether gorbachev was a reader  of graham green there were millions of them in   the soviet union or had noticed his name in  intelligence reports concerning latin america   where green had extensive dealings with  the leaders of cuba panama and nicaragua yathoflev ligachoff and gorbachev were the three  most powerful figures in russia why did they care   whether an elderly british novelist visited the  country it is entirely possible that they took   seriously green's long ago comments about being  willing to live in the soviet union or more likely   they thought he could become an enthusiastic  advocate for the new soviet union in the west   as david cornwell points out authors are held in  greater esteem in russia than in the west and they   probably overrated green's influence and still it  seems that they wanted him as some sort of trophy   and his various anodyne meetings with  philby were a small price to pay for this   during his travels they offered him  the order of lenin which he turned down   because he did not want to believe that he  had secretly been a communist through his life   indeed despite briefly joining the communist party  in oxford as a lark his politics over many years   can best be described as social democratic there  is no evidence of him adopting radical leftist   views and this despite having a complicated  admiration for fidel castro and daniel ortega   he had written to a friend in 1985. russia  and the usa seem to be the same face looking   at each other in the same glass and there are  times when i certainly prefer the russian face   to the american face similar though they both  are and yet for green the mirror was deceptive   even distorting and he would have preferred  to smash it he did not want to be too deeply   involved with either side his sympathies were in  the developing world the soviets did not quite   understand this at the end of the forum green was  asked to give a speech and without preparation he   addressed the smiling gorbachev and made the case  that catholics and communists could work together   we are fighting together against the death squads  in el salvador we are fighting together against   the contras in nicaragua we are fighting  together against general pinochet in chile   after applause he added and i even  have a dream mr general secretary   that perhaps one day before i die i shall know  that there is an american ambassador of the   soviet i say american an ambassador of the soviet  union giving good advice at the vatican this last   statement seemed odd but green knew that some such  thing was in the works having broken diplomatic   ties the vatican and the soviet union exchanged  ambassadors in 1990 and greene did live to see it green took league offs took up ligachoff's  invitation six months later and traveled with   yvonne clauetta to siberia and saw novosibirsk and  irkutsk as well as tomsk which was usually closed   to foreigners because of its nuclear facilities  along the way a delegation of five senior kgb   officers came to pay their respects the  novelist was certainly being flattered back in moscow green and cloetta died with  the philippines and discussed peter wright's   then controversial book spy catcher the candid  autobiography of a senior intelligence officer   which claimed that the one-time head of  mi5 sir roger hollis was a mole and that   he was responsible for tipping off  kim philby prior to his defection   green was probably watching his old friend's  reactions very carefully through this conversation   but then philby never was an easy read meanwhile  back in england a news article appeared to the   effect that green was in moscow to help  philby with the second volume of memoirs   nicholas elliott who had confronted philbin  beirut in 1963 and who gets rough treatment   and spy catcher wrote to elizabeth dennis she  was graham's sister and his private secretary   and the wife and the wife of rodney  she herself had been a member of mi6   elliott wanted to know what was going on an old  friend of elliott's she later conveyed word from   graham that the memoir story was false and that  he thought spy catcher both inaccurate and boring   given his earlier pattern there's  no doubt that green reported to mi6   on his experiences in russia it is hard to  believe that there were remarkable revelations   even so many old friends and  colleagues such as nicholas elliott   could not understand what he was doing and  perhaps to some extent the problem remains in february 1988 he returned to the soviet union  for the airing of borovich's laudatory documentary   on him this also marked the only occasion that kim  philby appeared on television during his years in   russia sitting in a prim pinstripe suit beside  rufa before a row of pd james novels in a study   he said that green quote rather dropped out of  my life during my troubles but made contact again   when i came over here he spoke for 10 minutes  in praise of green and of the perfection of   his portrayal of the cia and the quiet american he  was happy to gloss over any disagreements they had   ever had i wouldn't say that our views coincided  but he belonged to those few who at least   sympathized with me this was the last time green  would meet with philby who died a few months later   and yet green did make one more visit to the  country to receive an honorary doctorate and to   attend a reception honoring his 84th birthday held  by the writers union at the soviet scaa hotel in   moscow which was also attended by philby's widow  green interrupted a toast to himself as guest of   honor to propose one of his own i want to drink to  the wife of my close friend who died not long ago   and to whom i was bound by warm memories he then  blew out the 84 candles on his cake it seems a   rather banal ending for a mysterious relationship  that stretched through 50 years i think it is   generally fair to say that the soviets were not  especially interested in green's visits as an   opportunity to obtain any significant points  of intelligence rather they wanted him in the   country and praising its reforms as a sign that  the country was at last coming in from the cold   whether british intelligence gave green specific  tasks to perform in the ussr is simply unknown   it's not very likely as he could make no discrete  contacts in the country being so closely watched   in future with the release of secret documents  we may come to understand a little more about   what otherwise seems a risky dalliance with  a foreign government intent on seducing him of course one aspect of green's enthusiasm to  visit the ussr at the time may seem mundane   but worth remembering he hated to  think of himself as written out   and probably hoped a last novel might come of  these experiences it didn't and the loss is ours you

Channel: International Anthony Burgess Foundation

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Id: tIr-G56rWMA

Length: 51min 20sec (3080 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 09 2020