Judgement?

There was once a very English historian, a very clever chap, a pillar of the establishment, married to the daughter of an earl and sometime master of Peterhouse College, Cambridge. One Hugh Trevor-Roper, Lord Dacre, known to most of us as the chap who took a fat fee from Murdoch to say that some diaries that Murdoch wanted to publish in that once respectable newspaper the 'Sunday Times' really were written by the hand of Hitler himself, when shortly afterwards they were shown to be forgeries, the whole business spawning a considerable and entertaining television drama fest.

He comes up today because of a short article in the NYRB about his relationship with Philby, the secret servant for Britain who turned out to be the even more secret servant for the USSR. The two of them worked together during the war, part of the influx of bright young things brought into the various secretive services to bolster up their war effort. It seems that they got on pretty well. Then, some years later, after Philby had settled down in Moscow and after both of them had gone into print about the whole sorry affair, Philby wrote a friendly letter to Trevor-Roper.

Trevor-Roper, despite having been rather fierce about Philby and his treachery in print, went so far as to compose a more or less friendly reply, and although it was never sent, he did keep it and one does wonder about his judgement. Is it right for a pillar of the establishment to be writing personal letters to a traitor? Is it prudent, given what the likes of Private Eye might have made of it had it come to light at the time?

All very odd.

PS: I recall reading the Philby version of the affair, 'My Secret War', not that long after it was published in 1968. But then I am not a pillar of the establishment and such things are permitted me - and nor do I recall the extent of the damage. I have no idea if it ran to the capture, interrogation (presumably not gentle) and execution of the hundreds of agents talked of in the le Carré novel. Or, to what extent, one could argue that the treachery was good for the world, if damaging to a narrow UK interest. And I am not sure that I am going to take the time and trouble to find out now, it was all rather a long time ago and the game has moved on.