Litzi Friedman stands very far from the usual image we have of the Cambridge spies. I have pieced together their stories from the sources that had the most access to Soviet archives, but it is still tough trying to work out where certainty lies. Until archives in Moscow were opened after the end of the cold war, we knew very little about them, and many of the biographical sources are bafflingly contradictory. Yet the two most successful spies, Maclean and Philby, were inspired and supported by extraordinary women. All the spies were men, two of them were homosexual, and whether you imagine Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess arguing with one another in smoke-filled rooms in Cambridge, buttering up naive diplomats in the Foreign Office, or sitting with grey-faced Russians on park benches, you are unlikely to imagine any women by their side.
Litzi Friedman's story has often been lost or distorted in histories of the Cambridge spies, who are usually seen as a purely masculine elite. This obscure Jewish woman from Vienna became the vital link between the idealistic men of Cambridge and the dark world of Soviet espionage. It was also Litzi who provided him with an introduction that would shape the rest of his life. Philby went on liking Litzi's determination, to such an extent that he went on to work with her, to fall in love with her, and then to marry her and take her to London.
