Queen Elizabeth II she was not told details of her longtime arts adviser's double life as a Soviet spy because palace officials did not want to add to her worries, newly declassified documents show.
Files on the royal art historian Anthony Blunt are part of a collection of MI5 secret services released on Tuesday by Britain's National Archives. They shed new light on a spy ring linked to Cambridge University in the 1930s whose members leaked secrets from the heart of British intelligence to the Soviet Union.
Blunt, who worked at Buckingham Palace as a reviewer for Queen's Pictures, was under suspicion for years before he finally admitted in 1964 that, as a senior MI5 officer during World War II, he had passed classified information to Soviet agents.
In one of the recently released files, an MI5 officer notes that Blunt said he was “deeply relieved” to be freed from the burden. In exchange for the information he provided, Blunt was allowed to keep his job, knighthood and social standing – while the Queen was apparently kept in the dark.
In 1972, her private secretary, Martin Charteris, told MI5 chief Michael Hanley that “the Queen did not know, and he saw no use in telling her now; it will only add to her worries, and there is nothing you can do about it. .”
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The government decided to inform the monarch in 1973 when Blunt was ill, fearing that there would be a media uproar after Blunt's death and journalists would be able to publish stories without fear of libel suits.
Charteris reported that “she took it all very calmly and without surprise” and “remembered that he was still under suspicion” in the early 1950s. Historian Christopher Andrew says in MI5's official history that the Queen had previously been told about Blunt “in general terms”.
Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022 at the age of 96 years.
Blunt was publicly exposed as a spy by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons in November 1979. He was eventually knighted but never prosecuted and died in 1983. at the age of 75 years.
Files held by Britain's secret intelligence services typically remain classified for decades, but agencies are increasingly moving towards greater openness. Some of the newly released documents will be featured in an exhibition called MI5: Official Secrets, which opens at the National Archives in London later this year.
Two of the Cambridge spies, Donald McLean and Guy Burgess, fled to Russia in 1951. A third, Kim Philby, continued to work for the foreign intelligence agency MI6 despite coming under suspicion. In January 1963 in Beirut he encountered his friend and MI6 colleague Nicholas Elliott, who testified to his duplicity.
The declassified files include Philby's typed confession and a transcript of his conversation with Elliott.
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In it, Philby confessed to betraying Konstantin Volkov, a KGB officer who tried to escape to the West in 1945, taking with him detailed information about “moles” inside British intelligence — including Philby himself. As a result of Philby's intervention, Volkov was kidnapped in Istanbul, taken back to Moscow and executed.
Elliot reported that Philby said that if he had his life to live again, he would probably behave the same way.
“I really felt a huge loyalty to MI6. I was treated very, very well there and I made some really wonderful friends there,” Philby said, according to the transcript. “But the main inspiration was the other side.”
Philby told Eliot that now that he had been exposed, the choice was “between suicide and prosecution”. Instead, he fled to Moscow, where he died in 1988.
The Cambridge spies have inspired many books, films and TV shows, including the 2023 TV series A Spy Among Friends, starring Guy Pearce as Philby and Damian Lewis as Elliot. Blunt starred in a 2019 episode of The Crown as Samuel West.
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According to files released in 2014, members of the Cambridge spy group were viewed by their Soviet superiors as hopeless drunkards incapable of keeping secrets, the BBC reports.
In one passage, Burgess is described as someone who is “constantly under the influence of alcohol,” while another note describes McLean as “not very good at keeping secrets,” according to the BBC. It adds that he was “constantly drunk” and drunk.