Queen Elizabeth II, who died in September 2022, was kept in the dark for almost ten years about the spying activities of one of her collaborators on behalf of the KGB, according to official documents recently declassified and published on Tuesday.
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Anthony Blunt, art historian and curator of the royal family’s art collections, one of the largest in the world, admitted in 1964 to being a Soviet agent since the 1930s.
But the Queen was not fully informed until nine years later, as declassified documents from MI5, the domestic intelligence service, published by the National Archives indicate.
When the monarch finally learned of the espionage activities of the historian, who had been appointed to his post in 1945 by his father, King George VI, she reacted “very calmly and without showing surprise”, these documents specify. .
The decision to inform the Queen had been taken because Blunt was ill. The government feared that the media would publish the information when he died. Records also reveal that Elizabeth II “did not like Blunt at all and saw him rarely.”
“Cambridge5” network
The latter had been recruited by the Soviets while a student at Cambridge University, joining one of the most famous spy networks of the 20th century, known as the “Cambridge 5” (the “Cambridge 5″). Cambridge Five”) and which also included double agents Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby.
Anthony Blunt, who had been an MI5 officer during World War II, passed a wealth of intelligence to his KGB superiors. He was the subject of suspicion as early as the 1950s. But due to lack of confession, he was allowed to maintain his position at the heart of the British establishment until the early 1960s.
Blunt was finally publicly outed by former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in a statement to Parliament in 1979. He died in 1983 at the age of 75, having been stripped of his knighthood.
The hit series “The Crown” devoted an episode to this affair. These documents are being made public ahead of the opening of an exhibition dedicated to the work of MI5, “MI5: Official Secrets”, which will be held this spring at the National Archives in London.
