H. St John Philby

St John Philby was a British colonial official who became a Muslim, an adviser to Ibn Saud, and the father of the Soviet agent Kim Philby. He was born in Ceylon, took a first at Cambridge, and joined the Indian Civil Service. Sent to Arabia in 1917 to coordinate with Ibn Saud while T. E. Lawrence worked with the Hashemites, he concluded almost immediately that Britain had backed the wrong side and spent the rest of his life saying so, which ended his official career. He resigned from the service in 1925, settled in Jeddah, converted to Islam in 1930, took the name Abdullah, and became a confidant of the king. He crossed the Empty Quarter in 1932, the second European to do so, and wrote a shelf of books about Arabian geography and history that are still consulted. He was also the intermediary in the 1933 oil concession that went to Standard Oil of California rather than to a British company, which the Foreign Office never forgave. He opposed the Second World War, was interned in 1940 under Defence Regulation 18B and released, and was briefly exiled from Saudi Arabia in the 1950s for criticising royal spending. His son Kim was recruited by Soviet intelligence in the 1930s. He died in Beirut in 1960, and Kim was in the room. He named his son after Kim in Kipling's novel. Whether he knew what Kim had become is one of the standing questions of the case and there is no evidence that he did. His own loyalties were to Arabia rather than to Britain, which he never concealed and which is a different thing from treason.

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