“In some ways, Philby’s story is that of a man in pursuit of ever more exclusive clubs. In a brilliant lecture written in 1944, C. S. Lewis described the fatal British obsession with the ‘inner ring’, the belief that somewhere, j ust beyond reach, is an exclusive group holding real power and influence, which a certain sort of Englishman constantly aspired to find and join […] ‘Of all the passions’, wrote Lewis, ‘the passion for the Inner Ring is the most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things’.”
‘A Spy Among Friends’ af Ben Macintyre, s. 41
