Queen Elizabeth II, who died in September 2022, was said to have been unaware for almost ten years of the spying activities of Anthony Blunt, curator of the royal family’s art collections and Soviet agent, according to declassified MI5 documents published Tuesday. Anthony Blunt confessed in 1964 to his role as a spy for the KGB, but the sovereign was not informed until 1973.
The late revelation of this affair is explained by the government’s fears of seeing information leak to the media following the death of Anthony Blunt, who was then ill. When the queen finally learned the truth, she reacted “very calmly and without showing surprise,” the documents say. They also specify that Elizabeth II “did not appreciate Anthony Blunt at all and saw him only rarely”.
Unmasked in 1979 by Margaret Thatcher
Recruited by the Soviets in the 1930s while a student at Cambridge, Anthony Blunt was part of the famous “Cambridge Five” spy network, alongside Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby. Despite suspicions raised as early as the 1950s, Anthony Blunt was able to maintain his influential position until his confession.
In 1979, the affair came to light when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher unmasked him in a statement to Parliament. Blunt, stripped of his knighthood, died in 1983 at the age of 75.
