“Aileen's story is so sad because she is right about her suspicions. But people don't believe her because she's got these mental health problems and people attribute her suspicions to her mental health problems. And then the fact that her husband is treating her shabbily and no one believes her makes her mental health problems worse.”
The Rest Is Classified · Geopolitics & World Affairs · October 2026
Aileen was Kim Philby's wife. Corera recounts that she began to suspect her husband was a traitor and told one of his friends in MI6, who assured her there was nothing in it.
Transcript
know. Yeah. I mean, but she may suspect. And I think this is the period where she may start to suspect. But
again, it's actually a very similar impulse to many of his MI6 colleagues, where you almost don't want to look it in the eye. Well,
for her, I mean, it would be a disaster. I mean, they've got children. They've got, you know, kind of five kids. I mean, imagine if he is a traitor. What's she going to do? I mean, it's a disaster to the family. But she starts to share some of her fears about him, including with Nicholas Elliott, this friend at MI6. And Nicholas Elliott says, no, there's nothing to worry about with Kim. You know, it's rubbish. There's nothing to these suspicions. She's drinking more. Her mental health is suffering again. She's staging these accidents as part of her kind of breakdown. Philby is having an affair with a woman in London. There's big rows at dinner parties. You know, she does seem to be suspecting things. She's got a psychiatrist, and she tells her psychiatrist that she thinks Kim Philby: Interrogated husband, is trying to get her to commit suicide. This psychiatrist then tells MI5, which seems to be a bit of a break of confidence. And at one point, she dramatically calls Nicholas Elliot and she says to Nicholas Elliot, Kim's gone to Russia and he's left a note. And Elliot is like, what? You know, you can understand because Elliot's his backer. He freaks out and he starts to, you know, put out alerts. Elliot then calls the house back and Philby picks up the phone. You know, she's made it all up. I mean, Aileen's story is so sad because she is right about her suspicions. Right. But people don't believe her because she's got these mental health problems and people attribute her suspicions to her mental health problems. And then the fact that her husband is treating her shabbily and no one believes her makes her mental health problems worse. Even worse. So it's a kind of desperate cycle for her as she's kind of descending in these years amidst fear, suspicion and breakdown. Philby himself is under surveillance and he knows that, but of course he knows how MI5 works. He's not in contact with his Soviet handlers really at this point. You know, he's kind of broken off. I
guess he has nothing much that would be useful to share. And it's dangerous. And it's
dangerous because he's under surveillance. So he feels a little bit abandoned, I think. Although, you know, he's often, you know, later in life, he won't kind of admit that. Eventually, he gets word through Anthony Blunt, the Cambridge spies, you know, that he's hard up. And through Blunt, they will get him £5,000 for Philby: Interrogated kind of help him out. But it's a sign of how desperate they are. Meanwhile, Arthur Martin, our kind of middle-class MI5 officer, our mole hunting hero, I think, in many ways, is still on him.
He doesn't give up.
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