MI5 files suggest queen was not briefed on spy in royal household for nine years
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Documents indicate monarch was informed Anthony Blunt was Soviet agent in 1973, though he confessed in 1964. The late Queen Elizabeth II was not told for almost 10 years that Anthony Blunt, a surveyor of the queen’s pictures and a member of the royal household, had confessed to being a Soviet double agent, previously secret security files suggest.
Declassified MI5 documents throw intriguing new light on how the security services closely guarded news that the art historian, of the notorious Cambridge Five spy ring, had confessed in April 1964, with records indicating the queen was only informed in 1973.
Only with fears over Blunt’s health, and of ensuing negative publicity should his confession and immunity from prosecution emerge upon his death, did Edward Heath’s government request the monarch’s private secretary, Martin Charteris, fully brief her.
Charteris reported back that “she took it all very calmly and without surprise: she remembered that he had been under suspicion way back in the aftermath of the Burgess/Maclean case. Obviously somebody mentioned something to her in the early 1950s, perhaps quite soon after the succession,” MI5’s then director general, Michael Hanley, noted in March 1973.
Hanley had urged the palace four months previously to sever ties with Blunt, who remained in post and was even knighted after his confession that he had spied for the Russians while a senior MI5 officer, after being recruited as a Cambridge don in the 1930s.
Only Charteris and his deputy, Philip Moore, “know about it at the palace,” Hanley wrote in November 1972. “Charteris thought that the queen did not know and he saw no advantage in telling her about it now; it would only add to her worries.” Blunt was about to retire aged 65 from his post. Charteris “affirmed that the queen was not at all keen on Blunt and saw him rarely”.
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