He worked for the KGB: Elizabeth II did not know about the spy in the royal palace

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Queen Elizabeth II did not know for ten years that a British art critic who worked at Buckingham Palace was carrying out tasks for the KGB, the Guardian reported. The spy's activities are mentioned in an MI5 intelligence report.

British intelligence feared that Queen Elizabeth II would learn from journalists about a spy who was operating in the royal palace. Information about the spy was concealed even after his confession. As it turned out, he was recruited for World War II, became suspected in the 1950s, and was exposed in the 1960s. The Guardian reported on the circumstances under which Elizabeth II was told about the KGB agent.

The publication reported on fragments of a report by the British intelligence agency MI5 on the activities of Soviet spies, some of whom operated directly in Buckingham Palace. One of these spies was Anthony Blunt, an art critic and “topographer of the Queen’s photographs.” Blunt voluntarily admitted to working for the USSR in 1964 and received immunity as a result. The leaked documents showed that MI5 really carefully kept secrets. In particular, the Guardian article explained that Elizabeth II only found out about the spy decades later, in 1973. It also reported on the reaction of the Queen, who was not even surprised, since she remembered that this person had already been under suspicion.

“She took it all very calmly and without surprise: she remembered that he had been under suspicion since the Burgess/Maclean affair. “Apparently, someone reminded her of something in the early 1950s,” the intelligence documents state.

It also explains why the media is interested in the fact that the Queen was unaware of the revelations. On the one hand, journalists recalled that Blunt was knighted after he confessed to the secret services that he worked for the KGB. On the other hand, the Queen was “reluctant to contact him,” and her secretary generally knew about the interrogations, but not about the confessions. It is also noted that even the then Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home (October 1963 – October 1964), who was told about the spy by Margaret Thatcher, was not informed about it.

The BBC published a fragment of Blunt's confession and a photo of him in his youth. The publication also specified that the Queen was only told because the spy had cancer, it was expected that he would die and then she would find out everything from the media.

The MI5 report, which British media began to publish, discusses the activities of Soviet intelligence services and the exposure of the so-called Cambridge Five. The group included Britons Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and John Cairncross. All were recruited in the 1930s, and the exposure occurred three decades later, in the 1960s.