EDITH AND KIM
Charlotte Philby
Borough Press
REVIWED By ANNE STEVENS
This is the story of Edith Suschitzky, known to the British Secret Service by her married name of Edith Tudor-Hart.
The story begins with Edith’s recollection at 12 in 1920 of her father’s arrest. Her father and uncle had opened and operated a bookshop and publishing house in Vienna’s 10th district, a poor working-class area steeped in despair, to be a beacon of hope - the first socialist bookshop.
After World War 1, Austria’s democratic government fell apart and socialist thinking became grounds for persecution and arrest.
From an early age Edith had pursued an argument with her father as he condemned the violence of the Austrian communist party, that books and ideas were not enough, that thoughts would not feed a dying man.
Change required action. The bourgeois capitalist machine oppresses the poor and to talk of democracy when working people are starving is, in Edith’s accepted wisdom, unacceptable. Her commitment to communism and later to Russia becomes stronger as she leaves home to work and study.
She loves men who share her beliefs and eventually recruit her, to recruit spies. These associations and activities on Edith’s part mean her life in Austria becomes increasingly untenable. In the period prior to her departure from Europe, she studies photography at the Bauhaus and makes lifelong friends. Her younger brother and only sibling, Wolf, also studies photography and like her it becomes his means of making a living.
To Edith, throughout the book, photography is not simply a source of income but a means to capture the lives of the people around her.
Eventually Edith marries an Englishman principally, it seems, as a vehicle to live legitimately in England. In one of her visits to the country prior to her marriage she is identified as a communist by the British Intelligence Service and told to leave. Her husband, Alexander, is a dour young British medical student studying in Vienna who shares her faith in communism. They marry in August 1933 and move to London in February 1934.
But of course, all does not run smoothly. The story is interspersed with selections from the British Intelligence Service file on Edith.
The novel has endless detail and will no doubt hold fascination for those interested in these historical events. And for those who simply value a good story, it is worthy read.
