Art historian and Soviet spy, born in Bournemouth, Dorset, S England, UK. In 1926 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and became a fellow there in 1932. Influenced by Guy Burgess, he acted as a talent-spotter, supplying to him the names of likely recruits to the Communist cause, and during his war service in British Intelligence with MI5 was in a position to pass on information to the Soviet government. In 1964, after the defection of Kim Philby, a confession was obtained from Blunt in return for immunity from prosecution, and he continued as surveyor of the Queen's pictures, a post he held from 1945 to 1972. His full involvement in espionage was made public only in 1979. A distinguished art historian, he had been director of the Courtauld Institute of Art (194774). His knighthood (1956) was annulled in 1979.
Anthony Frederick Blunt (26 September 1907 – 26 March 1983), known as Sir Anthony Blunt between 1956 and 1979, was an English art historian, formerly Professor of the History of Art, University of London and director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, London (1947-74).
Biography
Early life
Blunt was born in Bournemouth, where his father was a vicar.
Espionage
After visiting Russia in 1933, Blunt was recruited in 1934 by the NKVD (forerunner of the KGB). A committed Marxist, Blunt was instrumental in recruiting Guy Burgess, and Donald Maclean.
Postwar Life
After the war he became director (1947-1974) of the Courtauld Institute of Art.
In 1945 Blunt became Surveyor of the King's Pictures, and retained the post under Queen Elizabeth II, for which work he was knighted as a KCVO in 1956.
Blunt is frequently spoken of as a distant relative of Queen Mary (Mary of Teck) – generally Prince Michael of Hesse is given as their common cousin – however, the exact lineage is never produced. Master, daughter of Gertrude Mosley-Master, the daughter of Frances Mary Smith, sister of Oswald Smith, father of Frances Dora Smith, mother of Claude George Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, father of Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, making Blunt and the Queen Mother third cousins, through the Smith family.
In 1963 MI5 learned of his espionage from an American, Michael Straight, whom he had recruited. Blunt confessed to MI5 on 23 April 1964, but his spying career remained an official secret until he was publicly named by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979. According to MI5 papers released in 2002, that agency had been told by the writer Lady Moura Budberg in 1950 that Blunt was a member of the Communist Party, but the information was ignored.
He was the brother of writer Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt and of numismatist Christopher Evelyn Blunt.
Blunt in fiction
A Question of Attribution was a play written by Alan Bennett about Blunt in the weeks before his public exposure as a spy, and his relationship with the Queen.
The Untouchable, a 1997 novel by John Banville, is a roman à clef based largely on the life and character of Anthony Blunt; the novel's protagonist, Victor Maskell, is a loosely disguised Blunt. Blunt, François Mansart and the Origins of French Classical Architecture. Blunt, Baroque and Rococo Architecture and Decoration. Blunt, Borromini. Blunt, Art and Architecture in France, 1500-1700, 1953. Blunt, "Roman Baroque Architecture: the Other Side of the Medal," Art history, no. Blunt, "Rubens and architecture," Burlington magazine, 1977, 894, pp. Anthony Blunt, Picasso's Guernica, Oxford University Press, 1969. Miranda Carter, Anthony Blunt: His Lives, Pan (UK), ISBN 0-330-36766-8. Michael Straight, After Long Silence: the Man Who Exposed Anthony Blunt Tells for the First Time the Story of the Cambridge Spy Network from the Inside, London Collins, 1983, ISBN 0-00-217001-9.
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