A previously unseen video of Kim Philby, one of Britain’s most notorious spies and a long-time Soviet agent, has been unearthed by the BBC. The tape is fascinating: Philby speaks candidly about his life career as a Soviet agent, how he was recruited and why he escaped detection for so long.

The recording is from 1981 when Philby gave a lecture to the East German intelligence service. In the tape is welcomed with loud applause as he makes his way to the podium and he takes questions afterwards. What he says is remarkable: he speaks about "thirty years in the enemy camp" and coolly describes how he was passing on sensitive information. "Every evening I left the office with a big briefcase full of reports that …files and documents from the archive… The next morning I would get the files back, the contents having been photographed and early the next morning I would put them back in their place. That I did regularly year in year out."

Philby avoided detection for years. Even after the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean in 1951, Philby’s cover was not blown and he only defected to Moscow in 1963. In this particular speech, he gives us a good idea why this was: because of class bias. He says he was neither exposed nor mistreated because others knew he was from a privileged class, an old boys club, and that made it likely might soon be in a position of power.

Even when he was in the embassy in Washington D.C. (as the liaison between the British Intelligence Service and the CIA!) and it was thought there was a ‘mole’ at that station, both he and Maclean escaped detection because the investigating agents concentrated their efforts on the cleaners and assorted lower staff rather than on them.

Philby was eventually warned by a friend and MI6 colleague that new evidence had come to light that indicated he was working for the Soviets. He was in Beirut at that time and simply made his way to Moscow when an officer who in Beirut was to watch over him decided to go off on a skiing trip.

There is a view that MI6 let Philby get away because for them that was the simplest way out of the situation. That was the view that was later also articulated by Philby’s wife. It certainly proved the simplest option: there was a degree of embarrassment but the British did not have to be bothered with the problem of what to do with the double agent once he had been exposed. Moreover, once he was in Moscow, Philby was disabled as a Soviet agent as the Soviets would have then have considered him as a possible ‘infiltration threat’.

This video, unearthed from the archives of the Stasi in Berlin, is very interesting because it provides Philby’s own account of his life as a double agent. His story continues to fascinate even more than half a century after his defection, as he was a Soviet agent who was placed at the very heart of the British Intelligence establishment during the Cold War, and who avoided detection for 30 years.

In this address the suave, polished agent who betrayed his country and whose work sent hundreds of agents and operatives to their deaths demonstrates absolutely no remorse. And at the end of the tape the key advice he gives to his audience of spies is "never confess… deny everything".

It worked for him.

Best wishes,