49 Facts About Anthony Blunt

Anthony Blunt was the "fourth man" of the Cambridge Five, a group of Cambridge-educated spies who worked for the Soviets between the 1930s and the 1950s.

In 1964, after being offered immunity from prosecution, Anthony Blunt confessed to having been a spy for the Soviet Union.

Anthony Blunt was stripped of his knighthood immediately thereafter and died a little over three years later.

Anthony Blunt was born on 26 September 1907 in Bournemouth, in Hampshire.

Anthony Blunt was the third and youngest son of a vicar, the Revd Stanley Vaughan Blunt, and his wife, Hilda Violet, daughter of Henry Master of the Madras civil service.

Anthony Blunt's siblings included the writer Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt and numismatist Christopher Evelyn Blunt.

Anthony Blunt became fluent in French and intensely experienced the artistic culture available to him in Paris, stimulating an interest which lasted a lifetime and formed the basis for his later career.

Anthony Blunt was educated at Marlborough College, a boys' public school in Marlborough, Wiltshire.

In 1928, Anthony Blunt founded a political magazine, Venture, whose contributors were left-wing writers.

Anthony Blunt won a scholarship in mathematics to Trinity College, Cambridge.

However, they could not earn a degree in less than three years, hence Anthony Blunt spent four years at Trinity and switched to Modern Languages, eventually graduating in 1930 with a first class degree.

Anthony Blunt taught French at Cambridge and became a Fellow of Trinity College in 1932.

At a press conference decades later, Anthony Blunt claimed that Burgess recruited him as a spy after both had left Cambridge.

The historian Geoff Andrews writes that Anthony Blunt was "recruited between 1935 and 1936", while his biographer Miranda Carter says that it was in January 1937 that Burgess introduced Anthony Blunt to his Soviet recruiter, Arnold Deutsch.

In MI5, Anthony Blunt began passing the results of Ultra intelligence to the Soviets, as well as details of German spy rings operating in the Soviet Union.

Anthony Blunt reported that Rothschild argued that much more Ultra material should have been given to Stalin; for once, Philby reportedly dropped his reserve and agreed.

Anthony Blunt was later accused of betraying Operation Market Garden to benefit both the Nazis and the Russians.

The aim of the Soviets, and therefore of Anthony Blunt, would have been to prevent Allied forces from arriving in Berlin before the Russians.

The letters rescued by Morshead and Anthony Blunt were deposited in the Royal Archives and were returned in 1951.

The King had good reason to worry about the safety of the objects he had sent Anthony Blunt to retrieve: the senior American officers at Friedrichshof Castle, Kathleen Nash and Jack Durant, were later arrested for looting and put on trial.

Anthony Blunt was to warn Maclean, who now worked in the Foreign Office but was under surveillance and isolated from secret material.

Anthony Blunt collected Burgess at Southampton Docks and took him to stay at his flat in London, although he later denied that he had warned the defecting pair.

Anthony Blunt was interrogated by MI5 in 1952 but gave away little if anything.

Anthony Blunt named Cairncross, Jenifer Hart, Phoebe Pool, Peter Ashby, Brian Simon and Leonard Henry Long as spies.

Anthony Blunt passed analyses but not original material relating to the Eastern Front to Blunt.

Anthony Blunt was convinced that his confession would be kept secret.

Anthony Blunt was not stripped of his knighthood until Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher officially announced his treachery in 1979.

For unknown reasons, Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home was not informed of Anthony Blunt's spying, although the Queen and Conservative Home Secretary Henry Brooke had been fully informed.

Anthony Blunt's life was little affected by the knowledge of his treachery.

In interviews to publicise his book, Boyle refused to confirm that Anthony Blunt was "Maurice" and asserted that was the government's responsibility.

For weeks after Thatcher's announcement, Anthony Blunt was hunted by journalists.

Anthony Blunt had recently given a lecture at the invitation of Francis Haskell, Oxford University's professor of art history.

Anthony Blunt broke down in tears in his BBC Television confession at the age of 72.

Anthony Blunt died of a heart attack at his London home, 9 The Grove, Highgate, in 1983, aged 75.

Anthony Blunt withdrew from society after he was officially exposed and seldom went out, but continued his work on art history.

Anthony Blunt held the position for 27 years, was knighted as a KCVO in 1956 for his work in the role, and his contribution was vital in the expansion of the Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace, which opened in 1962, and organising the cataloguing of the collection.

In 1947, Anthony Blunt became both Professor of the History of Art at the University of London, and the director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, where he had been lecturing since the spring of 1933, and where his tenure in office as director lasted until 1974.

Anthony Blunt is often credited for making the Courtauld what it is today, as well as for pioneering art history in Britain, and for training the next generation of British art historians.

Anthony Blunt wrote on topics as diverse as William Blake, Pablo Picasso, and the Galleries of England, Scotland, and Wales.

Anthony Blunt attended a summer school in Sicily in 1965, leading to a deep interest in Sicilian Baroque architecture, and in 1968 he wrote the only authoritative and in-depth book on Sicilian Baroque.

Anthony Blunt was unaware that a painting in his own possession was by Poussin.

Anthony Blunt intended to write a monograph about the architecture of Pietro da Cortona but he died before realising the project.

Anthony Blunt's manuscripts were sent to the intended co-author of this work, German art historian Jorg Martin Merz by the executors of his will.

Anthony Blunt's writing is lucid, and places art and architecture in their context in history.

The Untouchable, a 1997 novel by John Banville, is a based largely on the life and character of Anthony Blunt; the novel's protagonist, Victor Maskell, is a loosely disguised Blunt.

Anthony Blunt was portrayed by Samuel West in Cambridge Spies, a 2003 four-part BBC television drama concerning the lives of the Cambridge Four from 1934 to the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to the Soviet Union.

Anthony Blunt continued as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures until his retirement in 1972.

Anthony Blunt is portrayed by Nicholas Rowe in the 2022 ITVX miniseries A Spy Among Friends, an espionage drama based on Ben Macintyre's book of the same name.

Anthony Blunt Quayle played Herbert Glanville, an art critic dubbed the Fifth Man of a Cambridge spy ring who made a deal to get immunity from prosecution.