Daughter of Jewish Russian gold tycoon ‘cracked Kim Philby spy case’
Newly released National Archive files confirm Flora Solomon reported her suspicions about KGB spy Kim Philby to former MI5 officer Victor Rothschild at a 1962 cocktail party in Tel Aviv
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
The left-wing daughter of a Jewish Russian gold tycoon reported her suspicions about KGB spy Kim Philby to a former MI5 officer at a 1962 cocktail party in Tel Aviv, newly released files reveal.
Flora Solomon, who went on to become a senior executive at Marks & Spencer, had been a close friend of Philby, who became known as Britain’s most notorious traitor, for nearly three decades.
But she kept the fact that Philby was spying for Moscow a secret from 24 years – breaking the news to Victor Rothschild at the Tel Aviv party because she disliked the way her friend had become a staunch anti-Zionist.
Files released by the National Archives confirm that Solomon first learned about Philby’s recruitment by the Soviet authorities in 1938, after he returned from Spain, where he had been reporting on the civil war for The Times.
At a 1938 meeting in a London restaurant Philby told her “I am 100 per cent on the Soviet side and I am helping them.”
Solomon, who was later interviewed over the revelation by Rothschild, and MI5 Officers Arthur Martin and Peter Wright, also revealed that Philby tried to recruit her as a Soviet spy at the same meeting.
She turned down the offer of work, but remained in contact with Philby, who she said developed a “fixation” with her.
A widow herself, Solomon was having an affair with Alexander Kerensky, the Russian Prime Minister who was deposed by Lenin.
The files also reveal the Solomon did not wish to betray Philby for over two decades, because she herself was sympathetic to communism up until the 1950s.
But she changed her mind allegedly in the face of Soviet aggression, and the threat of the nuclear bomb.
But when she was interviewed formally by Martin, he believed Solomon’s true reason for betraying Philby was because of the anti-Israel reports he wrote for The Observer.
Using Solomon’s evidence, MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott was sent to Beirut to confront Philby, but he had fled the country to Moscow.
Ben Macintyre, who writes for The Times, and whose book about Philby was adapted by ITV for the A Spy Among Friends drama, now says he believes Solomon’s confession in Tel Aviv was the “moment that cracked the Philby case.”
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