Queen Elizabeth II wasn't told about Soviet spy in her palace, declassified MI5 files show
Source: AP
By JILL LAWLESS
Updated 2:33 AM CST, January 14, 2025
LONDON (AP) — Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t told details of her long-time art adviser’s double life as a Soviet spy because palace officials didn’t want to add to her worries, newly declassified documents reveal.
The files about royal art historian Anthony Blunt are among a trove from the intelligence agency MI5 released Tuesday by Britain’s National Archives. They shed new light on a spy ring linked to Cambridge University in the 1930s, whose members spilled secrets to the Soviet Union from the heart of the U.K. intelligence establishment.
Blunt, who worked at Buckingham Palace as Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, was under suspicion for years before he finally confessed in 1964 that, as a senior MI5 officer during World War II, he had passed secret information to Soviet agents.
In one of the newly released files, an MI5 officer notes that Blunt said he felt “profound relief” at unburdening himself. In return for information he provided, Blunt was allowed to keep his job, his knighthood and his social standing – and the queen was apparently kept in the dark.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/mi5-cambridge-spies-anthony-blunt-kim-philby-d123e20aa86880153fd830d3df16d242
= new reply since forum marked as read
