Sewell, who studied under Blunt at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, reveals in a new memoir that he found out about his mentor’s spying not long after MI5 had extracted his confession in 1964.
Blunt, who worked for the security services during the second world war, had denied being recruited by the Soviets throughout his 11 previous interrogations.
His treachery remained unknown to all but a select few until Margaret Thatcher named him on the floor of the Commons in 1979. The shock was increased by Blunt’s status as a close adviser to the monarch — he was surveyor of the Queen’s pictures from 1945-72.
The two men became friends in the mid-1950s when Sewell was a student at the Courtauld, where Blunt was director from 1947 until his retirement in 1974.
“Anthony told me in the mid-1960s that he’d been a spy,” said Sewell, whose latest memoir, Outsider II, is published on November 1. “It simply came up in a conversation we were having one day. I didn’t see any reason to discuss it with him much more.”
He also says the Queen knew of Blunt’s spying, but still kept him in his royal post for nearly a decade after finding out. “The Queen had been told he was a spy after his confession,” Sewell said...
The Sunday Times.
Eh?
Saying nobody knew Blunt was a spy is like saying nobody knew Sir Jimmy Savile had a thing for underage girls.
What next?
Stevie Wonder's blind?
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