Carter - Anthony Blunt

Pan Books

For John and Finn

I would particularly like to thank Blunts executor, John Golding. This book could not have been written without his help.

I would also like to thank all the people whom I interviewed during my research. Their testimonies, of which I have made profuse and unashamed use, are the marrow of this book. Professor Christopher Andrew, Lord Annan, Jack Baer, Olivier and Quentin Bell, Sir Isaiah Berlin, David Bindman, John Blamey, Tom Bower, Sir Alan Bowness, Helen Braham, Desmond Bristow, Anita Brookner, Howard Capes, Robin Chancellor, Lord Charteris, Monique Chatenet, Professor Andrew Ciechanowiecki, Thomas Cocke, Rosalys Coope, Professor Joseph Connors, John Craxton, Norah David, His Grace the Duke of Devonshire, The Dowager Lady Egremont, Caroline Elam, Charles Elwell, Gavin Ewart, Denis Farr, John Fleming, Sibylla Jane Flower, Sir Edward Ford, Kenneth Garlick, Sir Ernst Gombrich, St John Gore, Michael Grant, Rosamund Griffin, Sir Stuart Hampshire, Jenifer Hart, Francis Haskell, Elizabeth Haslock, Alethea Hayter, Eric Hebborn, Jack Hewit, Derek Hill, Baronness Hilton, Michael Hirst, Clive Hislop, Hugh Honour, Lord Hunt, Sidney Hutchinson, Michael Jaffe, Stephen Rees Jones, Martha Kelleher, Francis King, Dick Kingzett, Raymond Klibansky, Richard Krautheimer, Michel Laclotte, Alastair Laing, James Lees-Milne, Sir Michael Levey, Lesley Lewis, Andrew Lownie, Alastair Macdonald, Neil MacGregor, Polly Maguire, Charles Madge, Sir Denis Mahon, Hugh Massingberd, Anne Marie Meyer, Leonard Miall, Erica ODonnell, Edward Penning-Rowsell, Nicholas Penny, Sir Edward Playfair, Peter Pollock, Barbara Proctor, Kathleen Raine, John Richardson, Barbara Robertson, Pierre Rosenberg, Mark Roskill, Miriam Rothschild, Tess Rothschild, Michael Rubinstein, John Russell, Charles Rycroft, Dadie Rylands, John Shearman, Peter Smith, Lindsay Stainton, Jon Stallworthy, John Steer, Michael Straight, Michael Parke-Taylor, Roddy Thesiger, David Thomson, Giles Waterfield, John White, Mary Whiteley, Sarah Whitfield, Frank Whitford, Simon Wilson, Margaret Wind, Christopher Wright, Richard Wollheim, Dikker Worcester, George Zarnecki, and a number of others who prefer to go unnamed. I owe further thanks to everyone who wrote to me, especially the former Courtauld students who sent me their recollections of Blunt, and also George Curry, Alan Berends, Lord Dacre and Sir Michael Levey. Any errors of fact or interpretation are of course, all mine.

I owe special a debt of gratitude to Peter Kidson, Brian Simon, Richard Verdi, and the late Michael Kitson. Barrie Penrose, who as a Sunday Times journalist broke many of the spy stories of the early 1980s and then, with Simon Freeman, wrote the first proper account of Blunts spying, generously gave me his interview transcripts allowing me, among other things, to read interviews with people who had long since died. Rupert Allason, aka Nigel West, answered many of my queries and passed me his copies of documents from the Russian Intelligence Archives. Thanks to Peter Parker, Nick Jenkins, Kate Bucknell, Edward Mendelson, Tom Henry, Jeremy Lewis, Alexandra Chaldecott, Adam Sisman. Thanks to my agent Bill Hamilton, for all his help, and especially to my excellent and long-suffering editor Georgina Morley, who has stuck with me cheerfully through the years.

I would like to thank Marlborough College and its former archivist David West; Kings College Cambridge; and the Courtauld Institute. At the Courtauld, Professor Eric Fernie, Jane Ferguson, and most of all its former archivist Susan Scott, all went beyond the call of duty in helping me.

Extracts from Anthony Blunts writings, his papers at the Courtauld Institute, the Lee papers and the Courtauld registry papers are reprinted by permission of the Courtauld Institute and Blunts literary executor, John Golding. Extracts from the archives of the Colonial and Continental Church Society, Guildhall Ms, are reprinted by permission of the Guildhall Library, Corporation of London. Extracts from the Isaiah Berlin Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, are reprinted by permission of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust. Extracts from W. H. Audens Collected Poems are reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber. Extracts from W. H. Audens unpublished writings, copyright The Estate of W. H. Auden, are reprinted by permission of Edward Mendelson. Extracts from Letters from Iceland by W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice are reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber and David Higham Associates. Extracts from Louis MacNeices The Strings Are False and Collected Poems are reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber and David Higham Associates. Extracts from Louis MacNeices unpublished letters, copyright the Estate of Louis MacNeice, are reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates. Extracts from Summoned by Bells by John Betjeman are reprinted by permission of John Murray (Publishers) Ltd. Letters from Ezra Pound to Anthony Blunt, copyright 2001 Mary De Rachewiltz and Omar S. Pound, are used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Papers from the Royal Archives are used by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen. Lord Crawfords unpublished article is used by permission of the NACF. Extracts from the diary of Ben Nicolson are printed by permission of Vanessa Nicolson. Extracts from the Bell and Charleston papers at Kings College Library, Cambridge, are reprinted by permission of the Society of Authors. Extracts from the Rudi Wittkower papers are reprinted by permission of Columbia University and Joseph Connors. Extracts from the Edgar Wind papers are reprinted by permission of Margaret Wind and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Extracts from Margot Wittkowers interview in the Getty Research Institutes Interviews with Art Historians are reprinted by permission of the Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 94109. Extracts from A Chapter of Accidents by Goronwy Rees published by Chatto & Windus are reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates. Extracts from Married to a Single Life by Wilfrid Blunt published by Michael Russell are quoted by permission of the Estate of Wilfrid Blunt. Extracts from Conspiracy of Silence by Barrie Penrose and Simon Freeman are reprinted by permission of HarperCollins. Extracts from the unpublished writings of J. M. Keynes, copyright 2001 The Provost and Scholars of Kings College, Cambridge. Extracts from the letters of Denis Mahon are reprinted by kind permission of the author. Extracts from letters and papers of Anthony Blunt, Fritz Saxl and Rudolph Wittkower in the Archives of the Warburg Institute, London, are reprinted by permission of the Warburg Institute. Extracts from the Blunt file at the BBC Written Archives Centre come by kind permission of the BBC. Extracts from Cecil Goulds memoir of Anthony Blunt copyright 2001 The Estate of Cecil Gould, reprinted by kind permission of Sir Michael Levey on behalf of the Estate.

Every effort has been made to contact all copyright holders of material in this book. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

From the moment of his exposure as a former Russian spy by the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, in November 1979, Anthony Blunt became a man about whom anything could be said.

He was described as the spy with no shame. He was an arrogant evil poseur. He was a treacherous Communist poof. It was rumoured that at Cambridge he had seduced and blackmailed

After his exposure, Blunt became a kind of screen on which fiction and fantasy were projected. There was little he could do about this. After the publication of one of the more extravagant stories he asked his lawyer, Michael Rubinstein, if he had any legal recourse, and was told that he did not: he had lost his good name, and it would therefore be impossible to sue for libel. He had in effect so defamed himself that no further defamation was possible.