English to a Fault
They'd forgive him most anything, because he was one of them: the genteel upper-- classes where drunkeness and eccentricity lead not to a suspicion of evil deceit, but to amused acceptance--a jovial turning away from what intelligent suspicion might reveal as a scandal. Macintyre's book is brilliantly observed and researched, and his narrative is propulsive. Kim Philby's betrayal of England had deadly consequences.
That he should have been found out on so many occasions but wasn't is almost unbelievable. Macintyre makes it believable.
