Someone buy the rights to this story: when Anthony Blunt, renowned art historian and former Soviet spy, died in 1983, he left 30,000 pages of his memoirs to the British Library in a steel container. His only wish: that no one open the box for 25 years. Thursday marked the end of those 25 years. Blunt's memoirs finally became public, but they offer a surprising lack of regret for betraying Britain to the Soviets in the 1930s. He neglects to apologize to those who were hurt by his betrayal—an absence not lost on those who’ve viewed the documents. When British intelligence agencies discovered his involvement in a Soviet spy ring, they granted him immunity from prosecution pending his cooperation with them. In 1979, however, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher exposed him as a spy, an act which made Blunt near suicidal.
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