Newly-released top-secret documents show one of the former monarch’s courtiers had admitted to spying for the Soviet Union in 1964 but that Elizabeth II was not told for almost a decade.
LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II had a spy in her midst but was not officially informed by the British secret service for almost a decade.
The revelation was made public following a recent release of archival papers by MI5, the U.K.’s domestic counterintelligence and security agency.
Anthony Blunt was a courtier of the former monarch, serving as surveyor of the queen’s pictures. Yet in 1964, he confessed to security officials, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, that he had spied for the Soviet Union for the past 30 years.
MI5 records made public for the first time show that the queen was only told about her employee’s espionage in 1973 when he left his position — nine years after he had admitted to spying.
Blunt had been allowed to remain in post, overseeing one of the most extensive art collections in the world, despite confirming he had assisted the Soviet security agency, the KGB. It would not be until 1979 that he was publicly outed and stripped of his knighthood as a result.
Edmund Neill, associate professor of modern history at Northeastern University in London, said it was “extraordinary” that officials had not informed the head of state.
“After his confession, he was still working away — he was still ‘Sir’ Anthony Blunt, surveyor of the queen’s pictures,” Neill says. “It is extraordinary in one sense. And we didn’t know that before these papers were released — it is a novel revelation.”
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The government releases top-level papers on a 20-year rolling basis through the National Archives. MI5 is not subject to the same transparency rules, meaning it can release its archives as it chooses and with some files partially redacted. The service decided to wait 60 years — and until after the queen’s death — to confirm it had kept the then-monarch in the dark about Blunt’s past.
Questions over palace hiding Blunt spy past
Estelle Paranque, associate professor in early modern history at Northeastern and a modern-day royal watcher, questioned whether Buckingham Palace officials would have hidden something as huge as Blunt’s past treachery from the queen.
MI5 files note that, after being told about Blunt’s case, the queen “took it all very calmly and without surprise.” Given the relaxed reception, Paranque speculates that it was possible the queen was told privately about Blunt but that it was omitted from official records.
“We can’t know everything that was said in oral discussions,” she points out. “Could Elizabeth II not have known for nine years? It seems like a long time for no one to tell her, even during a private one-to-one. I find that hard to believe.”
Blunt, who died in 1983, was part of a ring of British spies known as the “Cambridge Five,” so-called due to them all studying at the University of Cambridge at the same time.
Neill says the discovery of a group of Soviet agents during the Cold War was “embarrassing” for the British state.
Blunt had worked for MI5 during World War II before securing his position at the royal household in 1945. He reportedly passed 1,771 secret documents to the Soviets, having been particularly active during the war. Kim Philby, another of the five who worked as a double agent and eventually fled to Moscow, rose to a senior position in MI6, the U.K.’s foreign intelligence service.
Height of Cold War was terrible timing
“It would have been very embarrassing at that point for the security services,” Neill says, “to have to say how incredibly stupid they had been. And of course, this is a pretty hot moment in the Cold War — 1962 is the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is a pretty bad moment to be admitting that your spy service is pretty useless.
“Blunt confessed in 1964 but he wasn’t required to leave his job or anything. It is only much later that all of this comes out, with [former prime minister] Margaret Thatcher making an announcement to Parliament in 1979.”
The global context of the 1930s is key to understanding the motive of the Cambridge Five to spy, Neill explains.
He says they were disillusioned with capitalism and had developed a feeling that the “only people vigorously opposing the oncoming Nazi threat were communists” — a sense fueled by the Spanish Civil War in 1936, in which the Soviets and Nazis found themselves supporting opposing sides.
But Neill says those who continued spying for Soviet leader Joseph Stalin after he signed a nonaggression pact with the Nazis, which was in place between 1939-41, had to be “naive,” “fanatical” or simply in denial about the reality of their chosen cause.
Elizabeth I vs. Elizabeth II, a comparison
Tudor expert Paranque says Blunt was not the first spy to have been knowingly embedded in the English royal court.
Some 500 years before the 20th-century controversy, Elizabeth I (who ruled from 1558 to 1603) would have known, Paranque explains, that French ambassadors to Britain were in cahoots with her cousin Mary Stewart — also known as Mary, Queen of Scots — who had been working to depose her.
Guillaume de l’Aubespine and Michel de Castelnau both worked as French diplomats but they also held close ties to the Guise family — France-based relations of Mary.
“So in other words, they are spies for Mary Stewart at the English court,” Paranque says.
“And Elizabeth I knew that, as did Francis Walsingham — Elizabeth’s spymaster who was basically the first 007 — but yet they allowed them to remain in place. They didn’t create a diplomatic scandal by expelling them.”
Elizabeth I even told L’Aubespine that she knew he had been involved in an attempt on her life in 1587.
But Paranque says Elizabeth I calculated that, as well as helping to keep diplomatic relations smooth with France, allowing the French spies to remain in London would make it easier to keep tabs on them, while also allowing Walsingham’s spy network to remain intact.
“For Elizabeth I, it was better to know what type of people she had at court, rather than sending someone like L’Aubespine away and having someone worse replace him,” she adds.
“For Elizabeth I, it was, ‘That guy is not my friend, he is plotting against me. But I would rather have him plotting in the heart of London, where my spymaster Francis has all his eyes and ears on him and knows exactly what he’s up to, rather than sending him back to France where we won’t know what he’s doing.’”
There is a major difference that Paranque highlights in the context surrounding the two Elizabeths and their spy scandals.
There would have been no question of Elizabeth I being kept in the dark, she says, about who the spies were in the royal court because her life could have been placed in danger, given she was the ruler of England and the target of enemy plots.
“It would have been completely irresponsible not to tell her,” the historian continues.
“It was different for Elizabeth II — she was the head of state but she was not the prime minister. Her life was not the one in danger. I don’t think she ever would have been the target.”