Cold War spy Blunt regretful in memoir

An unpublished memoir by Anthony Blunt, a royal art historian who took part in Britain's notorious Cold War spy ring, expresses bitter regret for his role in exposing secrets to the Kremlin.

Anthony Blunt, a former knight and one of several upper-crust Cambridge scholars outed as spies, says spying for the Soviet Union was "one of the biggest mistakes of my life."

His 30,000-word memoir was released at midnight Wednesday, 25 years after it was passed to the British Library on the condition it not be released until 2009.

Blunt was an art adviser to both King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and was well-respected as an art historian. But he also worked for the MI5 intelligence agency during the Second World War and passed secrets to the Soviet Union.

He was part of a Cambridge spy ring involving Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and John Cairncross. Other people may also have been involved in the ring, recruited through their connections to those men.

All five had been Marxists in the 1930s, becoming enamoured of socialism in reaction against the fascism rising in Europe.

Burgess and Maclean, both British diplomats, fled to Moscow in 1951 and Philby in 1963, after being tipped off that they might be discovered.

Outed by Thatcher

Blunt escaped the consequences of his actions for many years, but Margaret Thatcher outed him publicly as a spy in 1979. He wrote his memoirs, typewritten on letter-sized paper, against the atmosphere of public anger that greeted those revelations.

He may have meant to draft a more comprehensive memoir about the spy ring, but was barred from access to documents that might have helped him research such a book.

The memoir reveals very little about what secrets he gave to the Soviets and emphasizes his later abandonment of communist ideals. 

"In fact, I was disillusioned about Marxism, as well as about Russia. What I personally hoped to do was to hear no more of my Russian friends, to return to my normal academic life," he wrote of the period after the Second World War.

"Of course, it was not as simple as that, because there remained the fact that I knew of the continuing activities of Guy, Donald and Kim."

In the memoir, Blunt says he was recruited as a spy by Burgess, who — like Blunt — was homosexual. Burgess urged him to avoid joining the Communist party and to "go underground" so he could get a job in the British government and spy for the Russians.

Thought to be master spy

"Guy, who was an extraordinarily persuasive person, convinced me that I could do more good by joining him in his work," said Blunt, who was once believed to have been the master spy who recruited others to the network.

"The atmosphere in Cambridge was so intense, the enthusiasm for any anti-fascist activity was so great, that I made the biggest mistake of my life," he added.

After the war, Blunt became surveyor of the King's pictures and later surveyor of the Queen's pictures. He was a cousin to the Queen Mother and may also have been the illegitimate child of King George V, according to the Daily Mail.

In 1945, at the end of his career with MI5, Blunt undertook a special mission to the defeated Germany, on behalf of the Royal Family, to recover incriminating letters written by the Duke of Windsor to Adolf Hitler.

Blunt confessed his involvement in spying in a secret inquiry in 1964 and it is believed the Queen knew of his confession.

He was also a professor at the University of London and director of the Courtauld Institute of Art. He earned a knighthood, but was stripped of it when it was revealed he was a spy.

Blunt died in 1987 and friends entrusted his manuscript to the British Library.