Anthony Blunt
Encyclopedia
Anthony Frederick Blunt (26 September 1907 – 26 March 1983), was a British art historian
who was exposed as a Soviet
spy
late in his life.
Blunt was Professor of the History of Art
at the University of London
, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art
, Surveyor of the King's Pictures and London. Known as Sir Anthony Blunt, KCVO
between 1956 and 1979 (when he was stripped of his honours), he was exposed as a member of the Cambridge Five
, a group of spies
working for the Soviet Union from some time in the 1930s to at least the early 1950s.
, the third and youngest son of a vicar, the Revd (Arthur) Stanley Vaughan Blunt (1870–1929) and his wife, Hilda Violet (1880–1969), daughter of Henry Master of the Madras civil service. He was the brother of writer Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt
and of numismatist Christopher Evelyn Blunt, and the grandnephew of poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
.
Blunt is frequently spoken of as a distant relative of Queen Mary (Mary of Teck
) – generally Prince Michael of Hesse is given as their common cousin – however, the exact lineage is never produced. He was, however, demonstrably a cousin of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
, the late Queen Mother
, through his mother, Hilda V. Master, daughter of John Henry Master, son of Frances Mary Smith, sister of Oswald Smith, father of Frances Dora Smith, mother of Claude George Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, father of Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon
, making Blunt and the Queen Mother
third cousins, by common descent from George Smith and his wife Frances Mary Mosley. The young Anthony and his two brothers Christopher and Wilfrid occasionally used to have tea with Elizabeth at the family's London home in Bruton Street, Mayfair – the house from which she was driven to Westminster Abbey
in 1923 (when Blunt was 16) to marry the Duke of York, later King George VI of the United Kingdom
.
Blunt's vicar father was assigned to Paris with the British embassy chapel, and so moved his family to the French capital for several years during Blunt's childhood. The young Anthony became fluent in French, and experienced intensely the artistic culture closely available to him, stimulating an interest which would last a lifetime and form the basis for his later career.
He was educated at Marlborough College
, where he joined the College's secret 'Society of Amici', in which he was a contemporary of Louis MacNeice
(whose unfinished autobiography The Strings are False contains numerous references to Blunt), John Betjeman
and Graham Shepard
. He was remembered by historian John Edward Bowle
, a year ahead of Blunt at Marlborough, as an intellectual prig, too preoccupied with the realm of ideas. He thought Blunt had too much ink in his veins and belonged to a world of rather prissy, cold-blooded, academic puritanism.
. At that time, scholars in Cambridge University were allowed to skip Part I of the Tripos and complete Part II in two years. However, they could not earn a degree in less than three years, and hence Blunt spent four years at Trinity and switched to Modern Languages, eventually graduating in 1930 with a first class degree. He taught French at Cambridge and became a Fellow of the Trinity college in 1932. His graduate research was in French art history and he traveled frequently to continental Europe in connection with his studies.
Like Guy Burgess
, Blunt was known to be homosexual, which was a criminal activity at that time in Britain. Both were members of the Cambridge Apostles
(also known as the Conversazione society), a Cambridge clandestine discussion group of 12 undergraduates, mostly from Trinity and King's Colleges who considered themselves to be the brightest minds in the university. Many were homosexual and Marxist
at that time. Amongst other members, also later accused of being part of the Cambridge spy ring, were the American Michael Whitney Straight
and Victor Rothschild who later worked for MI5
. Rothschild gave Blunt £100 to purchase "Eliezer and Rebecca" by Nicholas Poussin. The painting was sold by Blunt's executors in 1985 for £100,000 (totalling £192,500 with tax remission) and is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum
.
. As a Cambridge don
, Blunt visited the Soviet Union in 1933, and was possibly recruited in 1934. In a press conference, Blunt claimed that Guy Burgess
recruited him as a spy. Many sources suggest that Blunt remained at Cambridge and served as a talent-spotter. He may have identified Burgess, Kim Philby
, Donald Maclean, John Cairncross
and Michael Straight, who were all undergraduates at Trinity College, a few years younger than himself, as potential spies for the Soviets. But Blunt himself said in his public confession that it was Burgess who converted him to the Soviet cause, after both had left Cambridge. Both were members of the Cambridge Apostles
, and Burgess could have recruited Blunt or vice versa either at Cambridge University or later when both worked for British intelligence.
drove British forces back to Dunkirk, in May 1940 he was evacuated, by the Royal Navy
. During 1940, he was recruited to MI5
, the Security Service. Before the war MI5 mostly employed former Indian policemen, for it was in India
that the British Empire
faced security threats. But now much new brainpower arrived. MI5 may have known Blunt's views for an officer later claimed that it had been virtually running the Communist Party of Great Britain
and complained about the cost of pension payments to its retired infiltrators.
Blunt passed the results of Ultra
intelligence from decrypted Enigma intercepts of Wehrmacht radio traffic from the Russian front. He has also admitted to passing details of German spy rings, operating in the Soviet Union.
Ultra was primarily working on the Kriegsmarine
naval codes, which eventually helped win the battle of the Atlantic, but as the war progressed Wehrmacht army codes were also broken. Powerful receivers could pick up transmissions from Berlin, relating to German war plans. But there was great risk that if the Germans found out that their codes had been compromised, they would change the settings of the Enigma wheels, blinding the codebreakers.
Full details of the entire Operation Ultra were fully known by only four people, only one of whom routinely worked at Bletchley Park
. Dissemination of Ultra information did not follow usual intelligence protocol, but maintained its own communications channels. Military intelligence officers gave intercepts to Ultra liaisons, who in turn forwarded to the intercepts to Bletchley Park. Information from decoded messages was then passed back to military leaders through the same channels. Thus, each link in the communications chain knew only one particular job, and not the overall details of Ultra. Nobody outside Bletchley Park knew the source.
John Cairncross
, another of the Cambridge Five, was posted from MI6 to work at Bletchley Park. Blunt admitted to recruiting Cairncross and may well have been the cut-out between Cairncross and the Soviet controllers. For although the Soviet Union was now an ally, Russians were not trusted. Some information concerned German preparations and detailed plans for the Battle of Kursk
, the last decisive encounter on the Eastern Front. Malcolm Muggeridge
, himself a wartime British agent, recalls meeting Kim Philby
and Victor Rothschild, a friend of Blunt since Trinity College, Cambridge. He reported that at the Paris meeting in late 1955 Rothshchild argued that much more Ultra material should have been given to Stalin. For once, Philby reportedly dropped his reserve, and agreed.
During the war, Blunt attained the rank of major. In the final days of World War II in Europe, Blunt made a successful secret trip to Schloss Friedrichshof
in Germany to retrieve sensitive letters between the Duke of Windsor
and Adolf Hitler
and other leading Nazis. George VI asked Blunt, who worked part-time at the Royal Library
, to conduct the Royal Librarian, Owen Morshead, to Friedrichshof in March 1945 to liberate letters to the Empress Victoria
, a daughter of Queen Victoria, and mother to Kaiser Wilhelm. Papers rescued by Morshead and Blunt were deposited in the Royal Archives
.
According to MI5 papers released in 2002, Moura Budberg
, known as the Russian Mata Hari
and suspected of being a double agent, reported in 1950 that Blunt was a member of the Communist Party
, but this was ignored. According to Blunt himself, he never joined because Burgess persuaded him that he would be more valuable to the anti-fascist crusade by working with Burgess. It is possible that his activities were already known to the authorities shortly after the war. He was certainly on friendly terms with Sir Dick White
, the Head of MI5 and later MI6, in the 1960s, and they used to spend Christmas together with Victor Rothschild in Rothschild's house in Cambridge.
His NKVD control had also become suspicious at the sheer amount of material he was passing over and suspected him of being a triple agent. Later, he was described by a KGB officer as an 'ideological shit'.
With the defection of Burgess and Maclean to Moscow in May 1951, Blunt came under suspicion. He had been a friend of Burgess since Cambridge. Maclean was in imminent danger due to decryptions from Venona
. Burgess returned on the Queen Mary to Southampton after being suspended from the British Embassy in Washington for his conduct. He was to warn Maclean, who now worked in the Foreign Office but was under surveillance and isolated from secret material. Blunt collected Burgess at Southampton Docks and took him to stay at his flat in London, although he later denied that he had warned the defecting pair. Blunt was interrogated by MI5 in 1952, but gave little, if anything, away. Arthur Martin and Jim Skardon
had interviewed Blunt eleven times since 1951, but Blunt had admitted nothing.
Blunt was greatly distressed by Burgess` flight and, on Monday 28 May 1951, confided in his friend Goronwy Rees
, a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford
, who had briefly supplied the NKVD with political information in 1938-9. Rees suggested that Burgess had gone to the Soviet Union because of his violent anti-Americanism
and belief that America would involve Britain in a Third World War, and that he was a Soviet agent. Blunt suggested that this was not sufficient reason to denounce Burgess to MI5. He pointed out that “Burgess was one of our oldest friends and to denounce him would not be the act of a friend.” Blunt quoted E. M. Forster
's belief that country was less important than friendship. He argued that “Burgess had told me he was a spy in 1936 and I had not told anyone.”
In 1963 MI5 learned of Blunt's espionage from an American, Michael Straight
, whom he had recruited. Blunt confessed to MI5 on 23 April 1964, and Queen Elizabeth II was informed shortly thereafter. He also gave up John Cairncross
, Peter Ashby, Brian Symon and Leonard Henry (Leo) Long as spies. Long had also been a member of the Communist Party and an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge. During the war he served in M14 military intelligence in the War Office, with responsibility for assessing German offensive plans. He passed analyses but not original material relating to the Eastern Front to Blunt. In return for Blunt's full confession, the British government agreed to keep his spying career an official secret for fifteen years, and granted him full immunity from prosecution. Mrs Thatcher later declared that there would be no intention of prosecuting Long.
Blunt's life was little affected. In 1966, two years after his secret confession, Noel Annan
, provost of King's College, Cambridge, held a dinner party for Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins
, Ann Fleming, widow of James Bond
author Ian Fleming
, and Victor Rothschild and his wife Tess. The Rothschilds brought their friend and lodger – Blunt. All had had wartime connections with British Intelligence, Jenkins at Bletchley Park.
's book, Climate of Treason in 1979. Maurice was taken from the E. M. Forster novel of that name. Blunt tried to prevent the book being published, which was reported in the magazine Private Eye
. This drew attention to Blunt. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
revealed Blunt's wartime role in the House of Commons firstly on Thursday 15 November 1979, and in more detail on 21 November. Sir Bernard Ingham, Thatcher's press secretary, suggested "I believe she did it because she didn't see why the system should cover things up. This was early in her Prime Ministership. I think she wanted to tell the Civil Service that the politicians decide policy, not the system. She wanted them to know who was boss."
For weeks after Thatcher’s announcement, Blunt was hunted by the press. Once found, he was besieged by photographers. Blunt had recently given a lecture at the invitation of Francis Haskell
Oxford University's professor of art history. Haskell had a Russian mother and wife and had graduated from King’s College, Cambridge. To the press this made him an obvious suspect. They repeatedly telephoned his home in the early hours of the morning, using the names of his friends and claiming to have an urgent message for "Anthony".
Although Blunt was outwardly calm, the sudden exposure shocked him. His former pupil, art critic Brian Sewell
, said at the time “He was so businesslike about it; he considered the implications for his knighthood and academic honours and what should be resigned and what retained. What he didn't want was a great debate at his clubs, the Athenaeum
and the Travellers
. He was incredibly calm about it all."
Queen Elizabeth II stripped Blunt of his knighthood, and he was removed as an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College. After his BBC Television confession at the age of 72, he broke down in tears.
Blunt died from a heart attack at his home in London in 1983, aged 75.
suggested that he occupy his time writing his memoirs. Brian Sewell
, his former pupil, said they remained unfinished because he had to consult the newspaper library in Colindale, Edgware North London, to check facts. He was unhappy at being recognised. “I do know he was really worried about upsetting his family,” suggests Sewell. “I think he was being absolutely straight with me when he said that if he could not verify the facts there was no point in going on.” Blunt stopped writing in 1983 leaving his memoirs to his partner John Gaskin, who kept it for a year and gave it to Blunt's executor John Golding, a fellow art historian.
John Golding handed it to the British Library, insisting that it should not to be released for 25 years. It was finally made available to readers on 23 July 2009. Golding explains: “'I did so because, although most of the figures mentioned were dead, their families might not like it. It covers his Cambridge days and there are a number of names. They weren't all spies, but Communism was common among intellectuals in the Thirties.”
In the typed manuscript, Blunt conceded that spying for Communist Russia was "the biggest mistake of his life":
The memoir revealed little that was not already known about Blunt. When asked whether there would be any new or unexpected names, John Golding replied “I'm not sure. It's 25 years since I read it, and my memory is not that good.”
Although ordered by the KGB to defect with Maclean and Burgess to protect Philby, in 1951 Blunt realised “quite clearly that I would take any risk in [Britain], rather than go to Russia." After he was publicly exposed, he claims to have considered suicide but instead turned to "whisky and concentrated work".
ed as a KCVO
in 1956 for his work in the role, and his contribution was vital in the expansion and cataloguing of the Queen’s Gallery, which opened in 1962.
In 1947 he became both Professor of the History of Art at the University of London
, and the director of the Courtauld Institute of Art
, University of London, where he had been lecturing since the spring of 1933, and where his tenure in office as director lasted until 1974. This position included the use of a live-in apartment on the premises. During his 27 years at the Courtauld Institute, Blunt was respected as a dedicated teacher, a kind superior to his staff. His legacy at the Courtauld was to have left it with a larger staff, increased funding, and more space, and his role was central in the acquisition of outstanding collections for the Courtauld's Galleries. He is often credited for making the Courtauld what it is today, as well as for pioneering art history in Britain, and for training the next generation of British art historians.
In 1953, Blunt published his book Art and Architecture in France, 1500–1700, and he was in particular an expert on the works of Nicolas Poussin
, writing numerous books and articles about the painter, and serving as curator for a landmark exhibition of Poussin at the Louvre
in 1960, which was an enormous success. He also wrote on topics as diverse as William Blake
, Pablo Picasso
, the Galleries of England, Scotland, and Wales. He also catalogued the French drawings (1945), G. B. Castiglione and Stefano della Bella drawings (1954) Roman drawings (with H. L. Cooke, 1960) and Venetian (with Edward Croft Murray, 1957) drawings in the collection of the Queen, as well as a supplement of Addenda and Corrigenda to the Italian catalogues (in E. Schilling's German Drawings). He attended a summer school in Sicily
in 1965, leading to a deep interest in Sicilian architecture, and in 1968 he wrote the only authoritative and in-depth book on Sicilian Baroque
. From 1962 he was engaged in a dispute with Denis Mahon regarding the authenticity of a Poussin
work which rumbled on for several years. Mahon was shown to be correct. Blunt was also unaware that a painting in his own possession was also by Poussin. It has been suggested that Blunt could not accept that Poussin may have produced inferior work.
Notable students who have been influenced by Blunt include Brian Sewell
(an art critic for the Evening Standard
), Ron Bloore
, Nicholas Serota
, Neil Macgregor
, the former editor of the Burlington magazine, former director of the National Gallery and the current director of the British Museum
, John White
(art historian), Sir Alan Bowness
(who ran the Tate Gallery
), John Golding (who wrote the first major book on Cubism
), Reyner Banham
(an influential architectural historian), John Shearman
(the "world expert" on Mannerism
and the former Chair of the Art History Department at Harvard University
), Melvin Day
(former Director of National Art Gallery of New Zealand and Government Art Historian for New Zealand ), Christopher Newall (an expert on the Pre-Raphaelites), Michael Jaffé
(an expert on Rubens
), Michael Mahoney (former Curator
of European Paintings at the National Gallery of Art
, Washington, D.C., and former Chair of the Art History Department at Trinity College, Hartford), Lee Johnson
(an expert on Eugène Delacroix
), and Anita Brookner
(an art historian and novelist).
Among his many accomplishments, Blunt also received a series of honorary fellowships, became the National Trust picture adviser, put on exhibitions at the Royal Academy
, edited and wrote numerous books and articles, and sat on every influential art committee.
but he died before realizing the project. His manuscripts were sent to the intended co-author of this work, German art historian Jörg Martin Merz by the executors of his will. Merz published a book, Pietro da Cortona and Roman Baroque Architecture in 2008 incorporating a draft by the late Anthony Blunt.
Many of his publications are still seen today by scholars as integral to the study of art history. His writing is lucid, and is based largely on art and architecture in the context of their place in history. In his book Art and Architecture in France, for example, he begins each section with a brief depiction of the social, political and/or religious contexts in which works of art and art movements are emerging. And in Blunt’s Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450–1600, he clearly explains the motivational circumstances involved in the transitions between the High Renaissance
and Mannerism
. His ground-breaking work and logical method to art history have served as resources for many scholars, including Todd P. Olson and John Beldon Scott.
Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art presented to Anthony Blunt on his 60th Birthday, Phaidon 1967 (introduction by Ellis Waterhouse) contains a full list of his writings up to 1966.
Major works include:
Important articles after 1966:
is a play written by Alan Bennett
about Blunt, covering the weeks before his public exposure as a spy, and his relationship with Queen Elizabeth II
. After a successful run in London's West End, it was made into a television play directed by John Schlesinger
and starring James Fox
, Prunella Scales
and Geoffrey Palmer
. It was aired on the BBC
in 1991. This play was seen as a companion to Bennett's 1983 television play about Guy Burgess, An Englishman Abroad
.
Blunt: The Fourth Man is a 1985 film starring Ian Richardson
, Anthony Hopkins
, Michael Williams, and Rosie Kerslake, covering the events of 1951 when Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean went missing.
The Untouchable
, a 1997 novel by John Banville
, is a roman à clef
based largely on the life and character of Anthony Blunt; the novel's protagonist, Victor Maskell, is a loosely disguised Blunt, although some elements of the character are based on Louis MacNeice.
A Friendship of Convenience: Being a Discourse on Poussin's "Landscape With a Man Killed by a Snake", is a 1997 novel by Rufus Gunn set in 1956 in which Blunt, then Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, encounters Joseph Losey
, a film director fleeing McCarthyism
.
The "Gay Traitor" room in the infamous Haçienda
nightclub was inspired by Blunt.
Samuel West
portrayed Blunt in Cambridge Spies
, a 2003 four-part BBC television drama concerning the lives of the Cambridge Four from 1934 to the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to the Soviet Union.
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
who was exposed as a Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
spy
SPY
SPY is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:* SPY , ticker symbol for Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts* SPY , a satirical monthly, trademarked all-caps* SPY , airport code for San Pédro, Côte d'Ivoire...
late in his life.
Blunt was Professor of the History of Art
History of art
The History of art refers to visual art which may be defined as any activity or product made by humans in a visual form for aesthetical or communicative purposes, expressing ideas, emotions or, in general, a worldview...
at the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art
Courtauld Institute of Art
The Courtauld Institute of Art is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art. The Courtauld is one of the premier centres for the teaching of art history in the world; it was the only History of Art department in the UK to be awarded a top...
, Surveyor of the King's Pictures and London. Known as Sir Anthony Blunt, KCVO
Royal Victorian Order
The Royal Victorian Order is a dynastic order of knighthood and a house order of chivalry recognising distinguished personal service to the order's Sovereign, the reigning monarch of the Commonwealth realms, any members of her family, or any of her viceroys...
between 1956 and 1979 (when he was stripped of his honours), he was exposed as a member of the Cambridge Five
Cambridge Five
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies, recruited in part by Russian talent spotter Arnold Deutsch in the United Kingdom, who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and at least into the early 1950s...
, a group of spies
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
working for the Soviet Union from some time in the 1930s to at least the early 1950s.
Early life
Blunt was born in BournemouthBournemouth
Bournemouth is a large coastal resort town in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. According to the 2001 Census the town has a population of 163,444, making it the largest settlement in Dorset. It is also the largest settlement between Southampton and Plymouth...
, the third and youngest son of a vicar, the Revd (Arthur) Stanley Vaughan Blunt (1870–1929) and his wife, Hilda Violet (1880–1969), daughter of Henry Master of the Madras civil service. He was the brother of writer Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt
Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt
Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt was an art teacher, author, artist and curator of the Watts Gallery at Compton, Surrey. He taught art at Haileybury College and Eton College and helped to start a revolution in the hand-writing of British school-children, using the 15th c...
and of numismatist Christopher Evelyn Blunt, and the grandnephew of poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was an English poet and writer. He was born at Petworth House in Sussex, and served in the Diplomatic Service from 1858 to 1869. His mother was a Catholic convert and he was educated at Twyford School, Stonyhurst and at St Mary's College, Oscott...
.
Blunt is frequently spoken of as a distant relative of Queen Mary (Mary of Teck
Mary of Teck
Mary of Teck was the queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, as the wife of King-Emperor George V....
) – generally Prince Michael of Hesse is given as their common cousin – however, the exact lineage is never produced. He was, however, demonstrably a cousin of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the queen consort of King George VI from 1936 until her husband's death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II...
, the late Queen Mother
Queen mother
Queen Mother is a title or position reserved for a widowed queen consort whose son or daughter from that marriage is the reigning monarch. The term has been used in English since at least 1577...
, through his mother, Hilda V. Master, daughter of John Henry Master, son of Frances Mary Smith, sister of Oswald Smith, father of Frances Dora Smith, mother of Claude George Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, father of Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the queen consort of King George VI from 1936 until her husband's death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II...
, making Blunt and the Queen Mother
Queen mother
Queen Mother is a title or position reserved for a widowed queen consort whose son or daughter from that marriage is the reigning monarch. The term has been used in English since at least 1577...
third cousins, by common descent from George Smith and his wife Frances Mary Mosley. The young Anthony and his two brothers Christopher and Wilfrid occasionally used to have tea with Elizabeth at the family's London home in Bruton Street, Mayfair – the house from which she was driven to Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
in 1923 (when Blunt was 16) to marry the Duke of York, later King George VI of the United Kingdom
George VI of the United Kingdom
George VI was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death...
.
Blunt's vicar father was assigned to Paris with the British embassy chapel, and so moved his family to the French capital for several years during Blunt's childhood. The young Anthony became fluent in French, and experienced intensely the artistic culture closely available to him, stimulating an interest which would last a lifetime and form the basis for his later career.
He was educated at Marlborough College
Marlborough College
Marlborough College is a British co-educational independent school for day and boarding pupils, located in Marlborough, Wiltshire.Founded in 1843 for the education of the sons of Church of England clergy, the school now accepts both boys and girls of all beliefs. Currently there are just over 800...
, where he joined the College's secret 'Society of Amici', in which he was a contemporary of Louis MacNeice
Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis; nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco...
(whose unfinished autobiography The Strings are False contains numerous references to Blunt), John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
and Graham Shepard
Graham Shepard
Graham Shepard was an English illustrator and cartoonist.He was the son of E. H. Shepard, the illustrator of Winnie-the-Pooh and The Wind in the Willows. He was educated at Marlborough College and Oxford...
. He was remembered by historian John Edward Bowle
John Edward Bowle
-Education:He was educated at Marlborough College. There his contemporaries included John Betjeman, who became a friend, and Anthony Blunt, about whom he was consistently negative. He was an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was counted as an Aesthete.-Career:After his education,...
, a year ahead of Blunt at Marlborough, as an intellectual prig, too preoccupied with the realm of ideas. He thought Blunt had too much ink in his veins and belonged to a world of rather prissy, cold-blooded, academic puritanism.
Cambridge University
He won a scholarship in mathematics to Trinity College, CambridgeTrinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
. At that time, scholars in Cambridge University were allowed to skip Part I of the Tripos and complete Part II in two years. However, they could not earn a degree in less than three years, and hence Blunt spent four years at Trinity and switched to Modern Languages, eventually graduating in 1930 with a first class degree. He taught French at Cambridge and became a Fellow of the Trinity college in 1932. His graduate research was in French art history and he traveled frequently to continental Europe in connection with his studies.
Like Guy Burgess
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent, who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War...
, Blunt was known to be homosexual, which was a criminal activity at that time in Britain. Both were members of the Cambridge Apostles
Cambridge Apostles
The Cambridge Apostles, also known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, is an intellectual secret society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who went on to become the first Bishop of Gibraltar....
(also known as the Conversazione society), a Cambridge clandestine discussion group of 12 undergraduates, mostly from Trinity and King's Colleges who considered themselves to be the brightest minds in the university. Many were homosexual and Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
at that time. Amongst other members, also later accused of being part of the Cambridge spy ring, were the American Michael Whitney Straight
Michael Whitney Straight
Michael Whitney Straight, was an American magazine publisher, novelist, patron of the arts, a member of the prominent Whitney family, and a confessed spy for the KGB.-Biography:...
and Victor Rothschild who later worked for MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
. Rothschild gave Blunt £100 to purchase "Eliezer and Rebecca" by Nicholas Poussin. The painting was sold by Blunt's executors in 1985 for £100,000 (totalling £192,500 with tax remission) and is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum
Fitzwilliam Museum
The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge, located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge, England. It receives around 300,000 visitors annually. Admission is free....
.
Recruitment to Soviet espionage
There are a number of versions of how Blunt was recruited to the NKVDNKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
. As a Cambridge don
University don
A don is a fellow or tutor of a college or university, especially traditional collegiate universities such as Oxford and Cambridge in England.The term — similar to the title still used for Catholic priests — is a historical remnant of Oxford and Cambridge having started as ecclesiastical...
, Blunt visited the Soviet Union in 1933, and was possibly recruited in 1934. In a press conference, Blunt claimed that Guy Burgess
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent, who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War...
recruited him as a spy. Many sources suggest that Blunt remained at Cambridge and served as a talent-spotter. He may have identified Burgess, Kim Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
, Donald Maclean, John Cairncross
John Cairncross
John Cairncross was a British intelligence officer during World War II, who passed secrets to the Soviet Union...
and Michael Straight, who were all undergraduates at Trinity College, a few years younger than himself, as potential spies for the Soviets. But Blunt himself said in his public confession that it was Burgess who converted him to the Soviet cause, after both had left Cambridge. Both were members of the Cambridge Apostles
Cambridge Apostles
The Cambridge Apostles, also known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, is an intellectual secret society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who went on to become the first Bishop of Gibraltar....
, and Burgess could have recruited Blunt or vice versa either at Cambridge University or later when both worked for British intelligence.
Joining MI5
With the invasion of Poland by German and Soviet forces Blunt joined the British Army in 1939. During the phoney war he served in France in the intelligence corps. When the WehrmachtWehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
drove British forces back to Dunkirk, in May 1940 he was evacuated, by the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
. During 1940, he was recruited to MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
, the Security Service. Before the war MI5 mostly employed former Indian policemen, for it was in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
that the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
faced security threats. But now much new brainpower arrived. MI5 may have known Blunt's views for an officer later claimed that it had been virtually running the Communist Party of Great Britain
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
and complained about the cost of pension payments to its retired infiltrators.
Blunt passed the results of Ultra
Ultra
Ultra was the designation adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by "breaking" high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. "Ultra" eventually became the standard...
intelligence from decrypted Enigma intercepts of Wehrmacht radio traffic from the Russian front. He has also admitted to passing details of German spy rings, operating in the Soviet Union.
Ultra was primarily working on the Kriegsmarine
Kriegsmarine
The Kriegsmarine was the name of the German Navy during the Nazi regime . It superseded the Kaiserliche Marine of World War I and the post-war Reichsmarine. The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches of the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.The Kriegsmarine grew rapidly...
naval codes, which eventually helped win the battle of the Atlantic, but as the war progressed Wehrmacht army codes were also broken. Powerful receivers could pick up transmissions from Berlin, relating to German war plans. But there was great risk that if the Germans found out that their codes had been compromised, they would change the settings of the Enigma wheels, blinding the codebreakers.
Full details of the entire Operation Ultra were fully known by only four people, only one of whom routinely worked at Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
. Dissemination of Ultra information did not follow usual intelligence protocol, but maintained its own communications channels. Military intelligence officers gave intercepts to Ultra liaisons, who in turn forwarded to the intercepts to Bletchley Park. Information from decoded messages was then passed back to military leaders through the same channels. Thus, each link in the communications chain knew only one particular job, and not the overall details of Ultra. Nobody outside Bletchley Park knew the source.
John Cairncross
John Cairncross
John Cairncross was a British intelligence officer during World War II, who passed secrets to the Soviet Union...
, another of the Cambridge Five, was posted from MI6 to work at Bletchley Park. Blunt admitted to recruiting Cairncross and may well have been the cut-out between Cairncross and the Soviet controllers. For although the Soviet Union was now an ally, Russians were not trusted. Some information concerned German preparations and detailed plans for the Battle of Kursk
Battle of Kursk
The Battle of Kursk took place when German and Soviet forces confronted each other on the Eastern Front during World War II in the vicinity of the city of Kursk, in the Soviet Union in July and August 1943. It remains both the largest series of armored clashes, including the Battle of Prokhorovka,...
, the last decisive encounter on the Eastern Front. Malcolm Muggeridge
Malcolm Muggeridge
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy...
, himself a wartime British agent, recalls meeting Kim Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
and Victor Rothschild, a friend of Blunt since Trinity College, Cambridge. He reported that at the Paris meeting in late 1955 Rothshchild argued that much more Ultra material should have been given to Stalin. For once, Philby reportedly dropped his reserve, and agreed.
During the war, Blunt attained the rank of major. In the final days of World War II in Europe, Blunt made a successful secret trip to Schloss Friedrichshof
Schlosshotel Kronberg
Schlosshotel Kronberg in Kronberg im Taunus was built between 1889 and 1894 for the dowager German Empress Victoria, Princess Royal and named in honour of her husband, Frederick III, German Emperor....
in Germany to retrieve sensitive letters between the Duke of Windsor
Duke of Windsor
The title Duke of Windsor was created in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1937 for Prince Edward, the former King Edward VIII, following his abdication in December 1936. The dukedom takes its name from the town where Windsor Castle, a residence of English monarchs since the Norman Conquest, is...
and Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
and other leading Nazis. George VI asked Blunt, who worked part-time at the Royal Library
Royal Library, Windsor
The office of Royal Librarian, in the Royal Collection Department of the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom, is responsible for the care and maintenance of the royal collection of books and manuscripts owned by the Sovereign in an official capacity, as distinct from those owned...
, to conduct the Royal Librarian, Owen Morshead, to Friedrichshof in March 1945 to liberate letters to the Empress Victoria
Victoria, Princess Royal
The Princess Victoria, Princess Royal was the eldest child of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert. She was created Princess Royal of the United Kingdom in 1841. She became German Empress and Queen of Prussia by marriage to German Emperor Frederick III...
, a daughter of Queen Victoria, and mother to Kaiser Wilhelm. Papers rescued by Morshead and Blunt were deposited in the Royal Archives
Royal Archives
The Royal Archives, also known as the Queen's Archives, are a division of the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. It is operationally under the control of the Keeper of the Royal Archives, who is customarily the Private Secretary to the Sovereign.Although Sovereigns have kept...
.
Suspicion and secret confession
Some people knew of Blunt's role long before his public exposure. In 1948, a demobbed army officer, Philip Hay, came to Buckingham Palace to be interviewed for the post of Private Secretary to the widowed Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent. As he walked down a red-carpeted corridor with Sir Alan Lascelles, the King's private secretary, they passed Blunt in silence. When they were out of earshot, Sir Alan whispered to Hay: 'That's our Russian spy.'According to MI5 papers released in 2002, Moura Budberg
Moura Budberg
Moura Zakrevskaya, variously Countess Benckendorff and Baroness Budberg was the daughter of Ignaty Platonovitch Zakrevsky , a Russian nobleman. She first married Count Johann von Benckendorff, a high-ranking Czarist diplomat, in 1911...
, known as the Russian Mata Hari
Mata Hari
Mata Hari was the stage name of Margaretha Geertruida "M'greet" Zelle , a Dutch exotic dancer, courtesan, and accused spy who was executed by firing squad in France under charges of espionage for Germany during World War I.-Early life:Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was born in Leeuwarden, Friesland,...
and suspected of being a double agent, reported in 1950 that Blunt was a member of the Communist Party
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
, but this was ignored. According to Blunt himself, he never joined because Burgess persuaded him that he would be more valuable to the anti-fascist crusade by working with Burgess. It is possible that his activities were already known to the authorities shortly after the war. He was certainly on friendly terms with Sir Dick White
Dick White
Sir Dick Goldsmith White, KCMG, KBE , was a British intelligence officer. He was Director-General of MI5 from 1953 to 1956, and Head of the Secret Intelligence Service from 1956 to 1968.-Career:...
, the Head of MI5 and later MI6, in the 1960s, and they used to spend Christmas together with Victor Rothschild in Rothschild's house in Cambridge.
His NKVD control had also become suspicious at the sheer amount of material he was passing over and suspected him of being a triple agent. Later, he was described by a KGB officer as an 'ideological shit'.
With the defection of Burgess and Maclean to Moscow in May 1951, Blunt came under suspicion. He had been a friend of Burgess since Cambridge. Maclean was in imminent danger due to decryptions from Venona
Venona project
The VENONA project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, the majority during World War II...
. Burgess returned on the Queen Mary to Southampton after being suspended from the British Embassy in Washington for his conduct. He was to warn Maclean, who now worked in the Foreign Office but was under surveillance and isolated from secret material. Blunt collected Burgess at Southampton Docks and took him to stay at his flat in London, although he later denied that he had warned the defecting pair. Blunt was interrogated by MI5 in 1952, but gave little, if anything, away. Arthur Martin and Jim Skardon
Jim Skardon
William James Skardon was a Special Branch officer who became an MI5 interrogator and head of "The Watchers"...
had interviewed Blunt eleven times since 1951, but Blunt had admitted nothing.
Blunt was greatly distressed by Burgess` flight and, on Monday 28 May 1951, confided in his friend Goronwy Rees
Goronwy Rees
Goronwy Rees was a Welsh journalist, academic and writer. He was educated at the University of Oxford.He was during the 1930s a Marxist intellectual, and in contact with the Cambridge Five spy ring through Guy Burgess. Right at the end of his life he admitted spying for the USSR for a short time,...
, a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford
All Souls College, Oxford
The Warden and the College of the Souls of all Faithful People deceased in the University of Oxford or All Souls College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England....
, who had briefly supplied the NKVD with political information in 1938-9. Rees suggested that Burgess had gone to the Soviet Union because of his violent anti-Americanism
Anti-Americanism
The term Anti-Americanism, or Anti-American Sentiment, refers to broad opposition or hostility to the people, policies, culture or government of the United States...
and belief that America would involve Britain in a Third World War, and that he was a Soviet agent. Blunt suggested that this was not sufficient reason to denounce Burgess to MI5. He pointed out that “Burgess was one of our oldest friends and to denounce him would not be the act of a friend.” Blunt quoted E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
's belief that country was less important than friendship. He argued that “Burgess had told me he was a spy in 1936 and I had not told anyone.”
In 1963 MI5 learned of Blunt's espionage from an American, Michael Straight
Michael Whitney Straight
Michael Whitney Straight, was an American magazine publisher, novelist, patron of the arts, a member of the prominent Whitney family, and a confessed spy for the KGB.-Biography:...
, whom he had recruited. Blunt confessed to MI5 on 23 April 1964, and Queen Elizabeth II was informed shortly thereafter. He also gave up John Cairncross
John Cairncross
John Cairncross was a British intelligence officer during World War II, who passed secrets to the Soviet Union...
, Peter Ashby, Brian Symon and Leonard Henry (Leo) Long as spies. Long had also been a member of the Communist Party and an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge. During the war he served in M14 military intelligence in the War Office, with responsibility for assessing German offensive plans. He passed analyses but not original material relating to the Eastern Front to Blunt. In return for Blunt's full confession, the British government agreed to keep his spying career an official secret for fifteen years, and granted him full immunity from prosecution. Mrs Thatcher later declared that there would be no intention of prosecuting Long.
Blunt's life was little affected. In 1966, two years after his secret confession, Noel Annan
Noel Annan
Noel Gilroy Annan, Baron Annan, OBE was a British military intelligence officer, author, and academic. During his military career, he rose to the rank of Colonel and was appointed OBE...
, provost of King's College, Cambridge, held a dinner party for Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins
Roy Jenkins
Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM, PC was a British politician.The son of a Welsh coal miner who later became a union official and Labour MP, Roy Jenkins served with distinction in World War II. Elected to Parliament as a Labour member in 1948, he served in several major posts in...
, Ann Fleming, widow of James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
author Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
, and Victor Rothschild and his wife Tess. The Rothschilds brought their friend and lodger – Blunt. All had had wartime connections with British Intelligence, Jenkins at Bletchley Park.
Public exposure
Blunt's role was represented under the name Maurice in Andrew BoyleAndrew Boyle
Andrew Philip More Boyle was a Scottish journalist and biographer. His biography of Brendan Bracken won the 1974 Whitbread Awards and his book The Climate of Treason exposed Anthony Blunt as the "Fourth Man" in the Cambridge Five Soviet spy ring.He was born in the Scottish city of Dundee and was...
's book, Climate of Treason in 1979. Maurice was taken from the E. M. Forster novel of that name. Blunt tried to prevent the book being published, which was reported in the magazine Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
. This drew attention to Blunt. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
revealed Blunt's wartime role in the House of Commons firstly on Thursday 15 November 1979, and in more detail on 21 November. Sir Bernard Ingham, Thatcher's press secretary, suggested "I believe she did it because she didn't see why the system should cover things up. This was early in her Prime Ministership. I think she wanted to tell the Civil Service that the politicians decide policy, not the system. She wanted them to know who was boss."
For weeks after Thatcher’s announcement, Blunt was hunted by the press. Once found, he was besieged by photographers. Blunt had recently given a lecture at the invitation of Francis Haskell
Francis Haskell
Francis Haskell was an English art historian, whose writings placed emphasis on the social history of art.He read history at King's College, Cambridge and became a Fellow there in 1954...
Oxford University's professor of art history. Haskell had a Russian mother and wife and had graduated from King’s College, Cambridge. To the press this made him an obvious suspect. They repeatedly telephoned his home in the early hours of the morning, using the names of his friends and claiming to have an urgent message for "Anthony".
Although Blunt was outwardly calm, the sudden exposure shocked him. His former pupil, art critic Brian Sewell
Brian Sewell
Brian Sewell is an English art critic and media personality. He writes for the London Evening Standard and is noted for artistic conservatism and his acerbic view of the Turner Prize and conceptual art...
, said at the time “He was so businesslike about it; he considered the implications for his knighthood and academic honours and what should be resigned and what retained. What he didn't want was a great debate at his clubs, the Athenaeum
Athenaeum Club, London
The Athenaeum Club, usually just referred to as the Athenaeum, is a notable London club with its Clubhouse located at 107 Pall Mall, London, England, at the corner of Waterloo Place....
and the Travellers
Travellers Club
The Travellers Club is a gentlemen's club standing at 106 Pall Mall, London. It is the oldest of the surviving Pall Mall clubs, having been established in 1819, and was recently described by the Los Angeles Times as "the quintessential English gentleman's club." Visits are possible by invitation...
. He was incredibly calm about it all."
Queen Elizabeth II stripped Blunt of his knighthood, and he was removed as an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College. After his BBC Television confession at the age of 72, he broke down in tears.
Blunt died from a heart attack at his home in London in 1983, aged 75.
Memoirs
Blunt withdrew from society and seldom went out after his exposure. His friend Tess RothschildRothschild
Rothschild is a common German surname. It is a habitational name from a house distinguished with a red shield , the earliest recorded example dating from the 13th century...
suggested that he occupy his time writing his memoirs. Brian Sewell
Brian Sewell
Brian Sewell is an English art critic and media personality. He writes for the London Evening Standard and is noted for artistic conservatism and his acerbic view of the Turner Prize and conceptual art...
, his former pupil, said they remained unfinished because he had to consult the newspaper library in Colindale, Edgware North London, to check facts. He was unhappy at being recognised. “I do know he was really worried about upsetting his family,” suggests Sewell. “I think he was being absolutely straight with me when he said that if he could not verify the facts there was no point in going on.” Blunt stopped writing in 1983 leaving his memoirs to his partner John Gaskin, who kept it for a year and gave it to Blunt's executor John Golding, a fellow art historian.
John Golding handed it to the British Library, insisting that it should not to be released for 25 years. It was finally made available to readers on 23 July 2009. Golding explains: “'I did so because, although most of the figures mentioned were dead, their families might not like it. It covers his Cambridge days and there are a number of names. They weren't all spies, but Communism was common among intellectuals in the Thirties.”
In the typed manuscript, Blunt conceded that spying for Communist Russia was "the biggest mistake of his life":
"What I did not realise is that I was so naïve politically that I was not justified in committing myself to any political action of this kind. The atmosphere in Cambridge was so intense, the enthusiasm for any anti-fascist activity was so great, that I made the biggest mistake of my life."
The memoir revealed little that was not already known about Blunt. When asked whether there would be any new or unexpected names, John Golding replied “I'm not sure. It's 25 years since I read it, and my memory is not that good.”
Although ordered by the KGB to defect with Maclean and Burgess to protect Philby, in 1951 Blunt realised “quite clearly that I would take any risk in [Britain], rather than go to Russia." After he was publicly exposed, he claims to have considered suicide but instead turned to "whisky and concentrated work".
Career as an art historian
Throughout the time of his activities in espionage, Blunt's public career was in the History of Art, a field in which he gained prominence. In 1940, most of his fellowship dissertation was published under the title of Artistic Theories in Italy, 1450–1600. In 1945, he was given the esteemed position of Surveyor of the King's Pictures, and later the Queen’s Pictures (after the death of King George VI in 1952), one of the largest private collections in the world. He held the position for 27 years, was knightKnight
A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....
ed as a KCVO
Royal Victorian Order
The Royal Victorian Order is a dynastic order of knighthood and a house order of chivalry recognising distinguished personal service to the order's Sovereign, the reigning monarch of the Commonwealth realms, any members of her family, or any of her viceroys...
in 1956 for his work in the role, and his contribution was vital in the expansion and cataloguing of the Queen’s Gallery, which opened in 1962.
In 1947 he became both Professor of the History of Art at the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
, and the director of the Courtauld Institute of Art
Courtauld Institute of Art
The Courtauld Institute of Art is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art. The Courtauld is one of the premier centres for the teaching of art history in the world; it was the only History of Art department in the UK to be awarded a top...
, University of London, where he had been lecturing since the spring of 1933, and where his tenure in office as director lasted until 1974. This position included the use of a live-in apartment on the premises. During his 27 years at the Courtauld Institute, Blunt was respected as a dedicated teacher, a kind superior to his staff. His legacy at the Courtauld was to have left it with a larger staff, increased funding, and more space, and his role was central in the acquisition of outstanding collections for the Courtauld's Galleries. He is often credited for making the Courtauld what it is today, as well as for pioneering art history in Britain, and for training the next generation of British art historians.
In 1953, Blunt published his book Art and Architecture in France, 1500–1700, and he was in particular an expert on the works of Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...
, writing numerous books and articles about the painter, and serving as curator for a landmark exhibition of Poussin at the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
in 1960, which was an enormous success. He also wrote on topics as diverse as William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, the Galleries of England, Scotland, and Wales. He also catalogued the French drawings (1945), G. B. Castiglione and Stefano della Bella drawings (1954) Roman drawings (with H. L. Cooke, 1960) and Venetian (with Edward Croft Murray, 1957) drawings in the collection of the Queen, as well as a supplement of Addenda and Corrigenda to the Italian catalogues (in E. Schilling's German Drawings). He attended a summer school in Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
in 1965, leading to a deep interest in Sicilian architecture, and in 1968 he wrote the only authoritative and in-depth book on Sicilian Baroque
Sicilian Baroque
Sicilian Baroque is the distinctive form of Baroque architecture that took hold on the island of Sicily, off the southern coast of Italy, in the 17th and 18th centuries...
. From 1962 he was engaged in a dispute with Denis Mahon regarding the authenticity of a Poussin
Poussin
Poussin refers to:*Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin Belgian mathematician*Charles-Louis-Joseph-Xavier de la Vallée-Poussin Belgian geologist and mineralogist, father of Charles Jean*Nicolas Poussin , French painter...
work which rumbled on for several years. Mahon was shown to be correct. Blunt was also unaware that a painting in his own possession was also by Poussin. It has been suggested that Blunt could not accept that Poussin may have produced inferior work.
Notable students who have been influenced by Blunt include Brian Sewell
Brian Sewell
Brian Sewell is an English art critic and media personality. He writes for the London Evening Standard and is noted for artistic conservatism and his acerbic view of the Turner Prize and conceptual art...
(an art critic for the Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
), Ron Bloore
Ron Bloore
Ronald Langley Bloore, CM, FRSC is a Canadian abstract artist and teacher. He was a member of the Regina Five which included Ken Lochhead, Art McKay, Ted Godwin, and Doug Morton.- Education :...
, Nicholas Serota
Nicholas Serota
Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art curator. Serota was director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, before becoming director of the Tate, the United Kingdom's national gallery of modern and British art in 1988. He was awarded a knighthood in 1999. He...
, Neil Macgregor
Neil MacGregor
Robert Neil MacGregor, OM, FSA is an art historian and museum director. He was the Editor of the Burlington Magazine from 1981 to 1987, the Director of the National Gallery, London, from 1987 to 2002, and was appointed Director of the British Museum in 2002...
, the former editor of the Burlington magazine, former director of the National Gallery and the current director of the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, John White
John White (art historian)
John Edward Clement Twarowski White, CBE is an English former art historian and was formerly the head of the Department of History of Art at the University College London . In 1992 he was made an Honorary Fellow of UCL...
(art historian), Sir Alan Bowness
Alan Bowness
Sir Alan Bowness CBE is a British art historian and museum director.Between 1980 and 1988, Bowness was Director of the Tate Gallery, realising the long desired expansion of the site at Millbank with the creation of the Clore Wing dedicated to the work of J.M.W. Turner...
(who ran the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
), John Golding (who wrote the first major book on Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
), Reyner Banham
Reyner Banham
Peter Reyner Banham was a prolific architectural critic and writer best known for his 1960 theoretical treatise Theory and Design in the First Machine Age and for his 1971 book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies...
(an influential architectural historian), John Shearman
John Shearman
John Kinder Gowran Shearman was an English art historian who also taught in America. He was a specialist in Italian Renaissance painting, regarded by many as "the outstanding figure" of his generation in this area, who published several influential works, but whose expected major books on...
(the "world expert" on Mannerism
Mannerism
Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...
and the former Chair of the Art History Department at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
), Melvin Day
Melvin Day
Melvin "Pat" Day, CNZM is a New Zealand artist and art historian.Day was born in Hamilton, New Zealand. At the age of eleven, Day began Saturday morning classes at Elam School of Art, University of Auckland, under the tuteleage of Archie Fisher, John Weeks, Lois White and Ida Eise...
(former Director of National Art Gallery of New Zealand and Government Art Historian for New Zealand ), Christopher Newall (an expert on the Pre-Raphaelites), Michael Jaffé
Michael Jaffé
Professor Michael Jaffé was a British art historian and curator. He was Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England for 17 years, from 1973 to 1990.-Life:...
(an expert on Rubens
Rubens
Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens , the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens (composer) Rubens is...
), Michael Mahoney (former Curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
of European Paintings at the National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
, Washington, D.C., and former Chair of the Art History Department at Trinity College, Hartford), Lee Johnson
Lee Johnson (art historian)
Professor Lee Frederick Johnson, was an Art Historian and specialist in the works of the French nineteenth century painter Eugène Delacroix.- Early life and scholarship :...
(an expert on Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
), and Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner CBE is an English language novelist and art historian who was born in Herne Hill, a suburb of London.-Early life and education:...
(an art historian and novelist).
Among his many accomplishments, Blunt also received a series of honorary fellowships, became the National Trust picture adviser, put on exhibitions at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
, edited and wrote numerous books and articles, and sat on every influential art committee.
Later life
After Thatcher announced Blunt's espionage, he continued his art historical work by writing and publishing a Guide to Baroque Rome (1982). He intended to write a monograph about the architecture of Pietro da CortonaPietro da Cortona
Pietro da Cortona, by the name of Pietro Berrettini, born Pietro Berrettini da Cortona, was the leading Italian Baroque painter of his time and also one of the key architects in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture. He was also an important decorator...
but he died before realizing the project. His manuscripts were sent to the intended co-author of this work, German art historian Jörg Martin Merz by the executors of his will. Merz published a book, Pietro da Cortona and Roman Baroque Architecture in 2008 incorporating a draft by the late Anthony Blunt.
Many of his publications are still seen today by scholars as integral to the study of art history. His writing is lucid, and is based largely on art and architecture in the context of their place in history. In his book Art and Architecture in France, for example, he begins each section with a brief depiction of the social, political and/or religious contexts in which works of art and art movements are emerging. And in Blunt’s Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450–1600, he clearly explains the motivational circumstances involved in the transitions between the High Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
and Mannerism
Mannerism
Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...
. His ground-breaking work and logical method to art history have served as resources for many scholars, including Todd P. Olson and John Beldon Scott.
Works
A FestschriftFestschrift
In academia, a Festschrift , is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during his or her lifetime. The term, borrowed from German, could be translated as celebration publication or celebratory writing...
Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art presented to Anthony Blunt on his 60th Birthday, Phaidon 1967 (introduction by Ellis Waterhouse) contains a full list of his writings up to 1966.
Major works include:
- Anthony Blunt, François Mansart and the Origins of French Classical Architecture, 1941.
- Blunt, Art and Architecture in France, 1500–1700, 1953 and many subsequent editions.
- Blunt, Nicolas Poussin. A Critical Catalogue, Phaidon 1966
- Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, Phaidon 1967 (new edition Pallas Athene publishing, London, 1995).
- Blunt, Sicilian Baroque, 1968 (ed. it. Milano 1968; Milano 1986).
- Blunt, Picasso's Guernica, Oxford University Press, 1969.
- Blunt, Neapolitan Baroque and Rococo Architecture, London 1975 (ed. it. Milano 2006).
- Blunt, Baroque and Rococo Architecture and Decoration, 1978.
- Blunt, Borromini, 1979 (ed. it. Roma-Bari 1983).
- Blunt, L'occhio e la storia. Scritti di critica d'arte (1936–38), a cura di Antonello Negri, Udine 1999.
Important articles after 1966:
- Anthony Blunt, 'Rubens and architecture,' Burlington Magazine, 1977, 894, pp. 609–621.
- Anthony Blunt, 'Roman Baroque Architecture: the Other Side of the Medal,' Art history, no. 1, 1980, pp. 61–80 (includes bibliographical references).
Depictions in culture
A Question of AttributionA Question of Attribution
A Question of Attribution is a 1988 one-act stage play, written by Alan Bennett. It was premièred at the National Theatre, London in December 1988, along with An Englishman Abroad. The two plays are collectively called Single Spies....
is a play written by Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...
about Blunt, covering the weeks before his public exposure as a spy, and his relationship with Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
. After a successful run in London's West End, it was made into a television play directed by John Schlesinger
John Schlesinger
John Richard Schlesinger, CBE was an English film and stage director and actor.-Early life:Schlesinger was born in London into a middle-class Jewish family, the son of Winifred Henrietta and Bernard Edward Schlesinger, a physician...
and starring James Fox
James Fox
James Fox, OBE is an English actor.-Early life:James Fox was born in London, England to theatrical agent Robin Fox and actress Angela Worthington. He is the brother of actor Edward Fox and film producer Robert Fox. The actress Emilia Fox is his niece and the actor Laurence Fox is his son. His...
, Prunella Scales
Prunella Scales
Prunella Scales CBE is an English actress, known for her role as Basil Fawlty's long-suffering wife in the British comedy Fawlty Towers and her award-nominated role as Queen Elizabeth II in the British film A Question of Attribution.-Career:Throughout her long career, Scales has usually been cast...
and Geoffrey Palmer
Geoffrey Palmer (actor)
Geoffrey Dyson Palmer, OBE is an English actor, best known for his roles in sitcoms such as Butterflies and As Time Goes By.-Career:...
. It was aired on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
in 1991. This play was seen as a companion to Bennett's 1983 television play about Guy Burgess, An Englishman Abroad
An Englishman Abroad
An Englishman Abroad is a 1983 BBC television drama, based on the true story of a chance meeting of an actress, Coral Browne, with Guy Burgess , a member of the Cambridge spy ring who worked for the Soviet Union whilst with MI6...
.
Blunt: The Fourth Man is a 1985 film starring Ian Richardson
Ian Richardson
Ian William Richardson CBE was a Scottish actor best known for his portrayal of the Machiavellian Tory politician Francis Urquhart in the BBC's House of Cards trilogy. He was also a leading Shakespearean stage actor....
, Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...
, Michael Williams, and Rosie Kerslake, covering the events of 1951 when Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean went missing.
The Untouchable
The Untouchable (novel)
The Untouchable is a 1997 novel by the Irish author John Banville. The book is written as a roman à clef, presented from the point of view of the art historian, double agent and homosexual Victor Maskell—a character based on the life of Cambridge spy Anthony Blunt, as well as on elements from the...
, a 1997 novel by John Banville
John Banville
John Banville is an Irish novelist and screenwriter.Banville's breakthrough novel The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011...
, is a roman à clef
Roman à clef
Roman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...
based largely on the life and character of Anthony Blunt; the novel's protagonist, Victor Maskell, is a loosely disguised Blunt, although some elements of the character are based on Louis MacNeice.
A Friendship of Convenience: Being a Discourse on Poussin's "Landscape With a Man Killed by a Snake", is a 1997 novel by Rufus Gunn set in 1956 in which Blunt, then Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, encounters Joseph Losey
Joseph Losey
Joseph Walton Losey was an American theater and film director. After studying in Germany with Bertolt Brecht, Losey returned to the United States, eventually making his way to Hollywood...
, a film director fleeing McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
.
The "Gay Traitor" room in the infamous Haçienda
The Haçienda
Fac 51 Haçienda was a nightclub and music venue in Manchester, England. It became most famous during the "Madchester" years of the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the 1990s it was labelled the most famous club in the world by Newsweek magazine...
nightclub was inspired by Blunt.
Samuel West
Samuel West
Samuel Alexander Joseph West is an English actor and theatre director. He is perhaps best known for his role in Howards End and his work on stage. He also starred in the award-winning play ENRON...
portrayed Blunt in Cambridge Spies
Cambridge Spies
Cambridge Spies is a 2003 four-part BBC television drama concerning the lives of the best-known quartet of the Cambridge Five Soviet spies from 1934 to the 1951 defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to the Soviet Union...
, a 2003 four-part BBC television drama concerning the lives of the Cambridge Four from 1934 to the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to the Soviet Union.