Memoirs of Cambridge spy released at British Library
Avery sad, isolated old man set down to write an account of his life, 25 years ago, hoping that he might explain the terrible mistake that had hung over the whole of his adult life.
Yesterday the public got its first view of the last testimony of Anthony Blunt, art historian and Soviet spy, which had been kept under a lock and key in the British Library since he died, subject to a 25-year rule banning anyone from reading them. The quarter century is now up and anyone curious enough can join the queue of readers at the library to dip into a long memoir by an old man looking back on a life soured by what he called the, "biggest mistake of my life".
He had confessed in 1964 but his treachery and confession were kept as state secret for 15 years until, in 1979, the writer Andrew Boyle used the US Freedom of Information Act, for which there was then no British equivalent, to tease out the fact that there was an unnamed "fourth man" in the Cambridge spy ring. Margaret Thatcher then identified that person as Sir Anthony, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures.
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
Yesterday the public got its first view of the last testimony of Anthony Blunt, art historian and Soviet spy, which had been kept under a lock and key in the British Library since he died, subject to a 25-year rule banning anyone from reading them. The quarter century is now up and anyone curious enough can join the queue of readers at the library to dip into a long memoir by an old man looking back on a life soured by what he called the, "biggest mistake of my life".
He had confessed in 1964 but his treachery and confession were kept as state secret for 15 years until, in 1979, the writer Andrew Boyle used the US Freedom of Information Act, for which there was then no British equivalent, to tease out the fact that there was an unnamed "fourth man" in the Cambridge spy ring. Margaret Thatcher then identified that person as Sir Anthony, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures.