Anthony Blunt
Anthony Frederick Blunt was a prominent British art historian and a member of the infamous Cambridge spy ring, which included notable figures such as Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. Born in 1907 in Bournemouth, England, Blunt was educated at prestigious institutions, including Trinity College, Cambridge, where he developed a strong interest in Marxism and became involved in espionage activities during the 1930s. His recruitment by the Soviet NKVD marked the beginning of a dual life, balancing his academic career with his role as a spy, during which he passed sensitive information to the Soviets while working for British intelligence.
Throughout World War II, Blunt served in Military Intelligence and was privy to critical information, including details from the British code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park. After the war, he returned to academia, becoming the director of the Courtauld Institute of Art and a respected figure in the art world, receiving a knighthood for his contributions. However, his espionage activities came to light in the 1960s when a former associate revealed his identity as a spy, leading to a significant scandal.
Despite being offered immunity in exchange for his testimony, Blunt faced public outrage and was stripped of his knighthood. He lived the remainder of his life largely in isolation, grappling with the guilt of his duplicity and the impact of his actions on his personal relationships. Blunt's story remains a complex blend of artistic achievement and betrayal, raising questions about loyalty and the hidden lives of influential figures in history.
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Subject Terms
Anthony Blunt
British art historian and spy for the Russians
- Born: September 26, 1907
- Birthplace: Bournemouth, Hampshire, England
- Died: March 26, 1983
- Place of death: London, England
Cause of notoriety: An admitted spy for the Soviets, Blunt later cooperated with British authorities and was granted immunity from prosecution.
Active: 1937-1983
Locale: London, England
Early Life
Anthony Frederick Blunt (bluhnt) was born at Holy Trinity Vicarage, Bournemouth, Hampshire, England. He was the third son of an Anglican clergyman, the Reverend Arthur Stanley Vaughan Blunt, and his mother was Hilda Violet, née Master, a distant relative of Queen Mary. He was educated at Marlborough College, a prestigious boarding school, but also spent time in Paris, France, where his father had become chaplain to the British embassy. It is there that he fell in love with French culture, especially French art. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained first-class honors in mathematics, French, and German.
While at Cambridge University, he became a member of the “Cambridge Apostles,” a semisecret society, where he became attracted to Guy Burgess, who was gay, like Blunt, and an avid communist, later to become one of the most productive spies for the Soviets, alongside two other Cambridge graduates, Donald Duart Maclean and Kim Philby.
After graduation, Blunt taught French briefly before election as a fellow of Trinity College for a dissertation on the history of art theory. He was also becoming increasingly committed to Marxism, reflected in art reviews that were being published in the The Spectator. In spring, 1937, he was introduced to Theo Maly, a Hungarian communist, a former priest, and now an agent for the Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD), a Soviet government department and the forerunner of the KGB. He was asked to become a “talent-spotter,” which he agreed to do. Blunt recruited an American, Michael Straight, and several others before the London branch of the NKVD was withdrawn.
Espionage Career
In summer, 1937, Blunt obtained a post at the prestigious Warburg Institute in London, where he met a number of Jewish refugee art professors and historians who greatly influenced him. At the outbreak of war, he joined the military and was appointed to Military Intelligence in France. Following the withdrawal of British forces, he was recruited into MI5, a branch of British intelligence responsible for internal affairs, and assigned surveillance duties with foreign embassies in London. Shortly after, the NKVD cell was reestablished, and Blunt agreed to pass on to it all he knew about MI5. Blunt had access to Ultra, the German code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park and one of Britain’s most sensitive secrets. He rose to become chief assistant to Guy Liddell, the chief of MI5, helping him restructure its surveillance system. In all, Blunt passed to the Soviets some one thousand documents (as compared with four thousand from Burgess), although KGB archives later revealed not all documents were even translated, let alone acted upon.
At the end of the war in 1945, Blunt left MI5 to resume his art career and could pass on only gossip to the KGB. In 1951, Burgess and Maclean had to flee to Moscow, and Blunt’s minder, Yuri Modin, urged Blunt to leave with them, as it appears Blunt had helped to arrange their escape and certainly had been seen with them. Blunt, however, felt his cover was strong enough to resist discovery and refused. By this point, he had become director of the Courtauld Institute of Art and professor of art history at London University and was regularly publishing books, especially on the French painter Nicholas Poussin. In 1952, he was appointed Surveyor of the King’s (later the Queen’s) Pictures, an honorary post, and in 1956, he was knighted for his services to art.
During the 1950’s, Blunt had been questioned some eleven times about Burgess and Maclean by the security services. The stress of such scrutiny led Blunt to heavy drinking. However, it was not until 1964 that Blunt’s cover collapsed. Straight had gone to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in 1963, told them of his espionage activities, and stated he was ready to testify against Blunt. MI5 went to Blunt and offered him immunity, with the authority of the attorney general, if he would tell them all he knew about the KGB. Blunt did so and named other spies he had recruited, such as John Cairncross.
Several former MI5 offices felt aggrieved that Blunt was not prosecuted and indeed, was living prestigiously. They leaked his story to Andrew Boyle, a writer with an intelligence background, and in 1979, he published a novel titled The Climate of Treason, in which a character called Maurice resembled Blunt. Questions were asked about a “fourth man” in the House of Commons of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; she acknowledged that Blunt was indeed the fourth man.
Initially, no legal action occurred. However, Blunt was immediately stripped of his knighthood, only the second person in British history to suffer this disgrace. He was also dismissed as Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures. By 1974, he had already retired from the Courtauld. His partner committed suicide, and three years later, Blunt himself died, shunned and alone. It seems the main guilt he had felt was in deceiving his friends.
Impact
One of the reasons for the cover-up of Blunt’s spying had been to retain confidence in the British intelligence. With his exposure, the search for a “fifth man” of the Cambridge Five began. Intelligence secrets suddenly became much more public, leading to the notorious trial of Peter Wright, a former MI5 agent, for publishing a book, Spycatcher (1987). The fact that Blunt had been inside the royal household caused special alarm, though it was established that he had never had access to anything confidential there. Blunt’s own considerable reputation as an art historian was sullied. Most people were unable to comprehend how such an established figure could have gone undetected for so long and why the intelligence service had not exposed him years before.
Bibliography
Boyle, Andrew. The Climate of Treason. London: Hutchinson, 1979. The novel that originally sparked the search for the fourth man, after the exposure of Burgess, Maclean, and Philby.
Carter, Miranda. Anthony Blunt: His Lives. London: Pan, 2001. A thorough biography of Blunt that seeks to understand the double life he led and the toll it took on him as a person.
Modin, Yuri, et al. My Five Cambridge Friends: Blunt, MacLean, Philby, Burgess, and Cairncross, by Their KGB Controller. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1995. An insider’s view of the Cambridge Five.
Stafford, David, and Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones. American-British-Canadian Intelligence Relationships, 1939-2000. London: Routledge, 2000. A comprehensive survey of Western intelligence, putting the Blunt affair in its full context.
Straight, Michael. After Long Silence. London: Collins, 1983. The man who exposed Anthony Blunt tells the story of the Cambridge spy network from the inside.