Patrick Pesnot - Great Spies of the 20th Century

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

PEN & SWORD MILITARY

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Copyright Patrick Pesnot, 2016

ISBN 978 1 47386 219 7

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Rbecca Denantes, Yannick Dehe, Jean-Pierre Guno, Ilinca Negulesco, Catherine Pesnot and Sabine Sportouch.

Authors note

Spies have one particularity: they only talk about themselves once their identity has been revealed. This means that in the dark world of intelligence, there are no doubt many spies out there who have not yet been caught. Whether they are sleeper agents or active moles, they remain hidden away.

The spies who feature in this book, be they heroic or pitiful, patriots or traitors, disinterested or greedy, have been in the media spotlight and have often paid for their secretive work either with their lives, or years of imprisonment. Yet they have rarely revealed their secrets. The object of this new book, based on the revelations of Mr X, is to clarify this matter.

More broadly, this bouquet of spies of all nationalities brings us closer to the reality of contemporary espionage and the existence of these intelligence minions, who have entrusted their fate to those cold monsters of the secret services of powerful nations.

Patrick Pesnot

Chapter 1

Blunt: the Gentleman Spy

He was a gentleman through and through. Dark suit with thin blue stripes, red tie, and a blue shirt on a thin, lanky and slightly arched body. His long, bony face had a melancholy expression, which flashed a clear but cold look. His wavy hair, just a little long, was impeccably parted on the left-hand side. This gentleman was a regular at Buckingham Palace, a Knight of the Realm and also a Commander in the order of the Lgion dhonneur. Yet Sir Anthony Blunt was also a spy. He was one of the Cambridge Five; five traitors taken from the upper echelons of English society, who during World War Two and the following years, rendered immense services to the Soviets.

Mr X has already discussed this matter by drawing particular attention to the most flamboyant of them, Kim Philby, a character who seems to have come straight out of a John Le Carr novel. However, he has remained very discreet about Anthony Blunt, a great art historian and member of the Queens counsel, whose role was only made public at the end of the 1970s. For a long time the British counterintelligence service knew the full truth about Sir Anthony, who were he alive today, would be over 100-years old. Yet no accusations were made against him. This is not the only mystery in an affair where there are still secrets yet to be revealed. It is a dossier that has all the ingredients of a very British scandal, mixing sex, politics and betrayal.

A recent and accurate biography of Anthony Blunt evokes the double life of this gentleman spy, who effectively had the characteristics of a chameleon. On the one hand, he presented himself as the perfect product of British High Society: an aesthete who had gone to the most prestigious schools in the kingdom, an art historian whose works were an authority and who personally watched over the collections of the royal family. Yet on the other hand, he was an ambivalent character who drank too much and in a time of very strict morals, hid as much of his homosexuality as he could.

The last dark side of his character was his life as a spy. A spy who, let us say from the outset, was betrayed, at least initially, by idealism. The Soviets rarely paid for his services, and if they did it was only in small amounts. As a homosexual, Blunt could also have been subjected to blackmail. However, it does not appear that his successive contract officers profited from this, even though as KGB agents, they did not hesitate to use all manners of sexual exploitation to recruit their spies. Yet this was not necessary in Blunts case; his commitment was sincere.

This affair hides a story within a story. While there is no doubt of Blunts betrayal, doesnt the fact that it was hidden for so long mean that it was also hiding something else? And why did Margaret Thatcher believe she was right to reveal the truth so soon after coming to power?

Anthony Blunt was the third son of a modest vicar. Nevertheless, he was distantly related to the royal family through his mother, who was second cousin to the future Elizabeth IIs father [George VI]. Despite the relative poverty of his parents, he began his studies at a renowned public school [Marlborough College], where discipline was ruthless and where living conditions were very harsh. The young Anthony swept up all the top honours and gained a scholarship to the famous Trinity College at Cambridge. which would be crucible for the training of the future Cambridge Five. After studying modern languages, this talented young man then joined the so-called Bloomsbury Group, a circle of artists and intellectuals, whose members included Virginia Woolf. The group brought together intellectuals who wanted to break away from the social norms of the time, not only in artistic areas, but also religious, social and sexual matters as well.

At Cambridge, Blunt felt particularly comfortable in the Bloomsbury Group. Later, he was also admitted to another influential circle, the Apostles, a clandestine discussion group, which at the time was chaired by the future economist, John Maynard Keynes. For Blunt, it was about absolute social and intellectual recognition. What is more, the Apostles counted many other homosexuals among their members, such as the writer, John Foster.

In the very narrow world of Cambridge, Blunt, a brilliant conversationalist, was already considered an important figure, especially now he had found his true calling: art, or rather the research and critiquing of it. He had spent part of his childhood in Paris after his father was assigned as the vicar to the British Embassys chapel. He became infatuated with the work of the French painter, Nicolas Poussin, who is unjustly underestimated and even ignored in modern times. The young critic decided to bring him out of the shadows and gradually became the international expert on the painters works. At the beginning of the 1930s he wrote a brilliant thesis on the works of Poussin, which allowed him to make his debut as a speaker at the Courtauld Institute of Art, the first institute of its kind to be created in Britain. At the same time, he also wrote reviews for specialist journals.