Short answers, pulled from the story.
Kim Philby was a British intelligence officer who served as a double agent for the Soviet Union from 1934 until his defection in 1963. He rose to head Section Nine of MI6, the section responsible for anti-communist efforts, while simultaneously passing large quantities of secret intelligence to the Soviets. He is widely considered the most successful of the Cambridge Five spy ring in providing information to the Soviet Union.
Kim Philby was born on the 1st of January 1912 in Ambala, Punjab, British India. His full name was Harold Adrian Russell Philby. His nickname Kim came from the boy-spy in Rudyard Kipling's novel of the same name.
Kim Philby was recruited to Soviet intelligence in June 1934 by Arnold Deutsch, a Soviet agent who was operating under cover at University College London. Deutsch made contact with Philby after Soviet intelligence had noted his involvement in anti-government demonstrations in Vienna earlier that year.
Kim Philby was a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring that passed British secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II and the early Cold War. Of the five members, Philby is widely regarded as the most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets. He also recommended other Cambridge contemporaries to Soviet recruiter Arnold Deutsch, including Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess.
On the evening of the 23rd of January 1963, Philby disappeared from Beirut, failing to appear at a dinner party at the British Embassy. He later claimed he left aboard the Soviet freighter Dolmatova, which had departed Beirut that morning bound for Odessa. His defection was not officially confirmed until the 1st of July 1963, when the Soviet government announced on the 30th of July that they had granted him political asylum and Soviet citizenship.
Philby arrived in Moscow in January 1963 and discovered he had been misled about his rank; he was not a KGB colonel as expected and was paid 500 roubles a month while under virtual house arrest with all visitors screened. It was ten years before he received a minor role training KGB recruits. He died of heart failure on the 11th of May 1988 at age 76, and was buried with the honours of a KGB General at Kuntsevo Cemetery in Moscow.