The Queen’s art curator who was revealed as a Soviet spy

He was the Queen’s art curator, but in 1979 Anthony Blunt was revealed as a Russian spy – and the royals had know about it for years. SPOILER ALERT

SPOILER ALERT: THE CROWN

He was the curator of Queen Elizabeth’s art collection, and a renowned member of Britain’s artistic establishment.

But on November 16, 1979, Sir Anthony Blunt was identified by the government as a member of what was known as the Ring of Five, central to the 1954 Burgess Maclean spy case.

What’s more: the Queen had known about it for more than 15 years.

Had the scandal been made public when she was initially informed, it would have caused too much controversy for Buckingham Palace.

So the royal family stayed quiet, and Blunt faced no consequences until he was publicly outed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The extraordinary affair is portrayed in the new season of Netflix’s The Crown, which dropped Sunday night. .

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Anthony Blunt escorts Queen Elizabeth II at Courtauld Institute in London in 1959.

Blunt had been involved with Buckingham Palace since 1945, when he was appointed by the Queen’s father, George VI, who was unaware of the curator’s double life.

The scandal was revealed to the Queen in 1964 – more than 10 years before Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher addressed the situation: That Sir Anthony Blunt, custodian of the royal family’s vast art collection, had been working as an active Soviet agent since the beginning of World War II.

Blunt, and the rest of the Cambridge Five, were recruited by Russians during their time at Cambridge University in the 1930s, and all five men ended up as moles deep inside British intelligence throughout WWII and during the most dangerous years of the Cold War.

He was interviewed 11 times by MI5 on suspicion of being a mole but never broke – and was instead revealed by former speechwriter for President Roosevelt, Michael Straight.

“The Queen’s private secretary was informed in April 1964, both of Blunt’s confession and of the immunity from prosecution on the basis of which it had been made,” Prime Minister Thatcher said in a statement to parliament in 1979.

Sir Michael Adeane, the private secretary, told Blunt’s interrogators at the time that the Queen had “been fully informed about Sir Anthony, and is quite content for him to be dealt with in any way that gets at the truth.”

Documents from British traitor Anthony Blunt.

Despite the Queen being made aware, Blunt was treated with astonishing leniency – he continued in his job, and retained his knighthood.

Blunt was kept on in the job, formally known as Surveyor of the Queen’s pictures, because “the job carried with it no access to classified information and no risk to security, and the security authorities thought it desirable not to put at risk his co-operation in their continuing investigations”.

When, 15 years later, Prime Minister Thatcher made the sensational announcement in parliament – revealing Blunt’s true identity – the Queen finally removed Blunt from his post and stripped him of his knighthood.