We are too unwilling to understand the motivations of Communist spy Kim Philby

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Stalin’s remark about Poland applied even better to Britain – trying communism there would be like trying to put a saddle on a cow. Poet Cecil Day-Lewis once said: “No one who did not go through can quite realise how much hope there was in the air then, how radiant for some of us was the illusion that man could, under Communism, put the world to rights.” The fact that Philby excelled at deception does not disqualify him from sharing that dream. As Deutsch put it: “An avowed communist can never get near the real truth, but somebody moving as real bourgeois among bourgeois could.” This is not to excuse Philby’s crimes. I don’t claim to understand Philby, but the picture of him that emerges from his time in Beirut and afterwards – his deeply sentimental nature, his neediness, his unshakeable dogma and conceit, his tormenting inner conflicts – will surely be needed by anyone who aspires to.