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Philby had certain unlikely assets as a spy. He stammered badly, which won him instant sympathy and enabled him. in tight situations, to gather his thoughts before speaking. He drank to the brink of alcoholism but never became indiscreet, a facility that spared him suspicion for a long time. Reasoned his associates: "Surely so reckless a drinker could not be hiding a great secret." Serving a far-off master, he seemed the sanest, least ambitious man in the highly competitive corridors of Britain's espionage establishment.
The Games of Intrigue. Now that Philby is "home" in Russia, as he puts it, the other side of that cool, professional cloak seems to have been exposed. As Eleanor Philby says, "I noticed that he sometimes seemed pathetically pleased by the approbation of the Russians. Every pat on the back was like a medal or a bouquet of flowers. Kim's excitement at any word of praise seemed disproportionate." Indeed, Conspiracy convincingly argues that Philby, recruited to Communism in his youth at Cambridge during the Depression, never really grew up. He played the games of intrigue, the hide-and-seek of duplicity, while remaining in essence politically naive.