In his major works of art history the enigmatic and elusive Anthony Blunt (1907-83) created a covert intellectual autobiography. His books on Nicolas Poussin, Francesco Borromini, William Blake and Pablo Picasso – the first three originally conceived as lectures, where his arguments seemed more persuasive than in print – reveal the connection between his high-minded scholarship and his subversive espionage. They show what George Steiner called “the coexistence within a single sensibility of utmost truth and falsehood".
Blunt led separate and contradictory lives as a then illegal homosexual and distinguished public figure, Communist and courtier, journalist and scholar, soldier and, beginning in 1934, Russian spy. One friend called him “the most compartmentalised man I ever met". Though he was never able to resolve his personal conflicts, he lived vicariously by writing about kindred spirits in art.
