A trove of intelligence files sheds new light on an espionage ring linked to Cambridge University whose members spilled secrets to the Soviet Union.
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.
In one of the newly released files, an MI5 officer says 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. Charteris reported that “she took it all very calmly and without surprise” and that the Queen had “remembered that he had been under suspicion way back” in the early 1950s. Historian Christopher Andrew says in the official history of MI5 that the queen had previously been told about Blunt in “general terms”.
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