St John Philby

St John Philby
St John Philby in Riyadh
Born	Harry St John Bridger Philby 3 April 1885 Badulla, British Ceylon
Died	30 September 1960(1960-09-30) (aged 75) Beirut, Lebanon
Alma mater	Westminster School Trinity College, Cambridge
Occupation	Arabist, explorer, writer, intelligence officer
Spouse(s)	Dora Philby
Children	4, including Kim Philby

Harry St John Bridger Philby, CIE (3 April 1885 – 30 September 1960), also known as Jack Philby or Sheikh Abdullah (الشيخ عبدالله), was a British Arabist, adviser, explorer, writer, and colonial office intelligence officer.

As he states in his autobiography, he "became something of a fanatic" and in 1908 "the first Socialist to join the Indian Civil Service". After studying oriental languages at the University of Cambridge, he was posted to Lahore in the Punjab in 1908, acquiring fluency in Urdu, Punjabi, Baluchi, Persian, and eventually Arabic. He converted to Islam in 1930, and later became an adviser to Ibn Saud, urging him to become King of the whole of Arabia, and helping him to negotiate with the United Kingdom and the United States when petroleum was discovered in 1938; in addition he married for the second time, to a Saudi Arabian.

His only son, Kim Philby, became infamous as a double agent for the Soviet Union in 1963.

Born in Badulla in British Ceylon, the son of a tea planter, he was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied oriental languages under Edward Granville Browne, and was a friend and classmate of Jawaharlal Nehru, who later became the first Prime Minister of independent India. Philby married Dora Johnston in September 1910, with his distant cousin Bernard Law Montgomery as best man. Alongside their son Kim, born in 1912, they had three daughters.