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Queen Elizabeth Wasn’t Immediately Told Her Art Adviser Was a Soviet Spy

ROYAL REVELATION

Newly released documents from British intelligence reveal new secrets about the late queen’s former art adviser.

Queen Elizabeth and Anthony Blunt
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British secret intelligence did not tell Queen Elizabeth II that her royal art adviser confessed to spying for the Soviet Union for almost a decade, according to newly released documents. The revelations come from a large tranche of documents made public by British intelligence service MI5 on Tuesday. Most of the documents relate to Cold War-era intelligence gathering on members of the Cambridge Five—the notorious spy ring made up of high-ranking British officials who passed along information to the Soviet Union. One of those spies was Anthony Blunt, the longtime Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures. One of the documents released on Tuesday was Blunt’s full confession to an MI5 interrogator in 1964. He was granted immunity from prosecution and was allowed to keep his position and knighthood. MI5 initially decided to keep the queen in the dark about Blunt’s confession. The queen’s private secretary finally told her in 1973, and said the monarch “took it all very calmly and without surprise.” Blunt’s role as a Soviet spy was finally made public by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and his knighthood was soon revoked. The fascinating archive also contains hundreds of pages of files on Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, and Donald Maclean—all of whom ended up defecting to the Soviet Union. It also includes dozens of files related to John Caincross, the fifth member of the spy ring who was not identified publicly until 1990.

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