Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t informed particulars of her long-time artwork adviser’s double life as a Soviet spy as a result of palace officers did not wish to add to her worries, newly declassified paperwork reveal.
The recordsdata about royal artwork historian Anthony Blunt are amongst a trove from the intelligence company MI5 launched Tuesday by Britain’s National Archives. They shed new gentle on a spy ring linked to Cambridge University within the Thirties, whose members spilled secrets and techniques to the Soviet Union from the center of the U.Okay. intelligence institution.
Blunt, who labored at Buckingham Palace as Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, was underneath suspicion for years earlier than he lastly confessed in 1964 that, as a senior MI5 officer throughout World War II, he had handed secret info to Soviet brokers.
In one of many newly launched recordsdata, an MI5 officer notes that Blunt mentioned he felt “profound aid” at unburdening himself. In return for info he supplied, Blunt was allowed to maintain his job, his knighthood and his social standing – and the queen was apparently stored at nighttime.
In 1972, her non-public secretary, Martin Charteris, informed MI5 chief Michael Hanley that “the queen didn’t know and he noticed no benefit in telling her about it now; it could solely add to her worries and there was nothing that might executed about him.”
/ AP
The authorities determined to inform the monarch in 1973, when Blunt was ailing, fearing a media uproar as soon as Blunt died and journalists have been capable of publish tales with out worry of libel fits.
Charteris reported that “she took all of it very calmly and with out shock,” and “remembered that he had been underneath suspicion manner again” within the early Nineteen Fifties. Historian Christopher Andrew says within the official historical past of MI5 that the queen had beforehand been informed about Blunt in “basic phrases.”
Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022 on the age of 96.
Blunt was publicly unmasked as a spy by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher within the House of Commons in November 1979. He was lastly stripped of his knighthood, however by no means prosecuted, and died in 1983 on the age of 75.
Files held by Britain’s secretive intelligence providers normally stay categorized for a number of a long time, however the companies are inching towards extra openness. Some of the newly launched paperwork will characteristic in an exhibition, entitled “MI5: Official Secrets,” opening on the National Archives in London later this yr.
Two of the Cambridge spies, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, fled to Russia in 1951. A 3rd, Kim Philby, continued to work for overseas intelligence company MI6 regardless of falling underneath suspicion. As proof of his duplicity mounted, he was confronted in Beirut in January 1963 by his good friend and fellow MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott.
The declassified recordsdata embrace Philby’s typed confession and a transcript of his dialogue with Elliott.
/ AP
In it, Philby admitted he had betrayed Konstantin Volkov, a KGB officer who tried to defect to the West in 1945, bringing with him particulars of moles inside British intelligence – together with Philby himself. As a results of Philby’s intervention, Volkov was kidnapped in Istanbul, taken again to Moscow and executed.
Elliott reported that Philby mentioned that if he had his life to steer once more, he would most likely have behaved in the identical manner.
“I actually did really feel an amazing loyalty to MI6. I used to be handled very, very effectively in it and I made some actually marvelous associates there,” Philby mentioned, in keeping with the transcript. “But the overruling inspiration was the opposite aspect.”
Philby informed Elliott that the selection confronted now that he was uncovered was “between suicide and prosecution.” Instead, he fled to Moscow, the place he died in 1988.
The Cambridge spies have impressed myriad books, performs films and TV reveals, together with the 2023 sequence ” A Spy Among Friends,” starring Guy Pearce as Philby and Damian Lewis as Elliott. Blunt featured in a 2019 episode of ” The Crown,” performed by Samuel West.
Marissa Davison / REUTERS
According to recordsdata launched in 2014, members of the Cambridge spy ring have been seen by their Soviet handlers as hopeless drunks incapable of holding secrets and techniques, the BBC reported.
One passage describes Burgess as a person “consistently drunk,” and one other observe describes Maclean as “not superb at holding secrets and techniques,” the BBC reported. It provides he was “consistently drunk” and binged on alcohol.
