A Spy Named Orphan

The Book in 1 Sentence

A book designed to to say "Woe is me, the traitor who betrayed my family, my friends, and my country for a lie"

Brief Review

This book drags you through weeds of information to present the dumbest that the UK has to offer from the establishment and from their turncoats. This is the type of book that makes you question why you decided to start reading it because a lot of the information feels completely superfluous. Philipps does a decent job of presenting story and justification, but at the expense of presenting a story that isn't biased.

Why I Read this book

Spies are cool and while America has an obsession with pointing out people defecting TO the USA, there are bound to be people who defected to the USSR or wanted to like Robert Hanssen. This book allowed me to read about someone who was helping them during WWII when modern spies really came into their element.

In-Depth Review (Favorite Quotes)

I read this book. Like sat down in bed and read this damn thing. My wife was so proud of me for finishing it thinking I started in in December. I went and looked, I started it in October. This is why I don't read books. It takes to long. Part of that is because I don't read a lot, maybe an hour a day, but this book was so full of detail that you didn't want to continue it.

To make a point about this, there is at least one, maybe two chapters talking about the dating relationships and POSSIBLE homosexual relationships that make no difference to the story as a whole. If the Russians had used his homosexual tendencies or actions and that is what made him turn traitor, then these chapters would have made sense. However, no such thing happened and after those chapters it was only ever dropped as a "oh this is why he maybe did this, or was a contributing factor" and honestly, it didn't matter. Who cares.

This book is told in a nice chronological order and overall is well written as far as style and voice. This biggest issue is the frame of the story. The entire things screams that you should feel sorry for this man, that he was tormented by his morals and ethics and how his home country did not fit those. In general, I do appreciate the idea of standing up for your beliefs and think that all should do it especially in countries that do not allow it, but at your OWN expense, not at the expense of others. He compromised the safety of his countrymen and honestly helped allow Russia to get nuclear weapons decades before they should have. He helped along with the spy that was on the Manhattan Project.

Late in his life he wrote: “I do not at all regret having done what seemed and still seems to me my duty. I took, and take, no pride in the actual process of carrying out my task”

To extend this idea that the book has too much detail, there is a chapter all about the Orphan's wife after he defected. First off, she was complicate and I don't think she thought through the consequences of their actions before making them. Secondly, what was going on with her does not help or support the book other than to fill space. There is a section about a letter he sent here and this was the comment made: "Melinda kept this love letter in her handbag for many years, and her mother noticed that she drew strength from it, panicking when on one occasion more than two years later she thought she had lost it"

How my life / behavior / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book.

The biggest thing to me from this book is this idea that the UK's snootiness and protection of the "Establishment" will constantly get them in trouble and between this and the next book, they do EVERYTHING they can to hide their embarrassment to the detriment of everyone including their allies.

Rating

There is way too much detail. No one needs to know the sex life, life of their spouse, comments from people who met them once to tell a story. This book could have easily been 40% shorter without the Tolkien level of detail that was provided. I am surprised I don't know what flowers they had in the house. It is a 4. Skip it for better books about the same thing. Also, my comment about the book trying to justify the duplicity is not unfounded. The author of the book had two grandparents that are mentioned in this story. Both of them either ignored the blatant signs that something was going on or agreed with the lie of Soviet Communism