The Queen Elizabeth IIwho died in 2022, was not informed for almost 10 years that one of his advisors of art was a double agent that also passed information to the Soviet Union, according to files declassified this Tuesday by MI5, the British national intelligence service.
Anthony Blunt He was in charge of supervising the Official Collection of Royal Art and one of the ‘Cambridge Five’, a group of British spies that was recruited by the Soviet Union at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge (central England), something that the late monarch did not know about until almost a decade after he confessed.
One of the documents of the British intelligence service is the statement that was taken in 1964 from Blunt, considered the leader of this group, where he acknowledges having worked for the Soviet Union. since the 1930sat the dawn of World War II, when he also worked for British intelligence.
In his confession, he admits to having been in contact with the Soviet intelligence services as well. after the war, when he was already working at Buckingham Palace in the service of Queen Elizabeth II as an art advisor and painting expert, a position he maintained after the declaration and was even knighted.
The Cambridge Five
The first suspicions about Blunt’s dual role within MI5 appeared in 1951when two of the members of The Cambridge Five Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean fled to the Soviet Union, for which he was interviewed by British intelligence on up to 11 occasions in which He denied espionage.
But it was not until 1973 when the then secretary of Queen Elizabeth II, Martin Charteris, informed the monarch about Blunt’s role, something that was taken “very calmly and without surprises” and recalled that he was under suspicion after the escape of his companions in the 1950s, reads in these documents that have been deposited in the British National Archives.
In the monarch’s office, this matter was known since 1972although it was not revealed to the monarch since “there was no advantage” in telling her, because “it would only increase her concerns”, according to the report of the then director of MI5, Michael Hanley.
Blunt’s role as a double agent It came to light in 1975, when the conservative Margaret Thatcher made a statement in this regard to the House of Commons (lower) due to the spy’s delicate state of health, which could provoke journalistic investigations that would reveal his role.
Blunt died in 1983 at the age of 74. after a long illness and after being stripped of his knighthood.
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