A lot of spy novels would have you believe that espionage involves elite globe-trotting adventures laced with good booze and cool toys, and certainly there are elements of all those things in Ben Macintyre’s vivid and fascinating new “A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal.” But this nonfiction book’s most intense scene is prosaic — two old friends, middle-aged English gentlemen who came up as spies through British intelligence, share a cup of tea while “lying courteously to each other” in a Beirut apartment in 1963.
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