Sir: Dear old Kim, with his talent for friendship, his
shy stammer and his adoles- cent dreams. How deeply he must have felt Ramsay MacDonald's betrayal of the work- ers and the ungentlemanly behaviour of Herr Dollfuss. Dear old Murray Sayle for putting the record straight. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, eh?
Some folk would never have possessed the ideological stamina to tread the lonely path cho.sen by Kim Philby. They would have run away at the first whiff of grapeshot. Not Kim. Through the killing of British agents, the purges of Stalin, the mass murders and deportations, through all the lies and miseries perpetrated by the Soviet state he kept his pristine faith. What a man!
And I don't want to see any of your more vulgar readers complaining that Mr Sayle's splendidly elegiac piece had no- thing to say about all the victims of Kim's little lark. They were probably the most dreadful oiks anyway. And I'll bet Mr Sayle never had the bad taste to have a drink with any of them.
Michael Toner
58 Waterloo Road, Bedford
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