Queen Elizabeth II was aware of the notorious Cambridge Five spy ring much earlier than previously thought but she kept it quiet along with the intelligence establishment, hitherto top secret files reveal.
The Cambridge Five were high-flying figures in British society who spied for the Soviet Union.
They included Anthony Blunt, an MI5 veteran and art historian who became Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures.
The others were diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, as well as intelligence officers Kim Philby and John Cairncross.
Newly released MI5 documents shed some fresh light on the scandal and confirm British intelligence’s desperate attempts to cover up the men’s treachery.
Among the files is a particularly intriguing note referring to what the Queen knew about the spy ring and for how long.
Blunt was offered immunity from prosecution in 1964 after he confessed to spying and he continued working for the Royal Household until 1972.
His treachery was not made public until 1979 when Margaret Thatcher confirmed – to the horror of the Whitehall establishment – that he had spied for Russia, as first reported in Private Eye.
The Queen then stripped him of his knighthood and he died in 1983.
But she already had suspicions about Blunt by the early 1950s, long before he confessed to MI5 interrogators, it has emerged.
What’s in the MI5 file on Anthony Blunt?
Sir Michael Hanley, then head of MI5, wrote a secret note to his colleague dated 19 March 1973.
Hanley said: “Burke Trend (the cabinet secretary) showed me last week a personal manuscript letter he had from Martin Charteris, the Queen’s private secretary. Charteris wrote that he had spoken to the Queen about the Blunt case.
“She took it all very calmly and without surprise; she remembered that he had been under suspicion way back in the aftermath of the Burgess/Maclean case.
“Obviously somebody mentioned something to her in the early 1950s, perhaps quite soon after her accession. She has been told that the danger of publicity would be quite strong after Blunt’s death.”
This is the first time there has been any suggestion the Queen had known for so long that one of her close advisers had been a Soviet spy.
It has been assumed that the first she knew of Blunt’s murky past was at the time of his confession in 1964.
Burgess and Maclean fled to the Soviet Union in 1951 after warnings from Philby that they were under suspicion.
Philby escaped to Moscow from Beirut in 1963, despite being offered immunity from prosecution by his former MI6 colleagues.
Cairncross, a colleague of Burgess, was also offered immunity from prosecution after suspicions mounted against him.
Subversive arts
The files further reveal that MI5 officers spent a huge amount of time trying to track down the gay actor, Dirk Bogarde.
They thought he might be the person mentioned by one of their sources as having been approached by Russian intelligence while visiting Moscow in the late 1950s.
They delved through old copies of Variety magazine searching for the names of actors who had visited the Soviet capital for international film festivals or theatre performances.
These included the actors James Robertson Justice, Stanley Baker, and Sidney James, and the singer Tommy Steele.
After exhaustive enquiries, MI5 officers finally managed to interview Bogarde and concluded there was no cause to suspect him.
Mark Dunton, historian at the National Archives and curator of a joint exhibition with MI5 opening in the spring with the title, MI5: Official Secrets, said: “The joy of the MI5 files are that many can be read as though they were a gripping spy novel. The difference is that these are the authentic, official records which give us rich layers of detail”.
The newly released files are in the KV2, KV3, and KV4 series in the archives’ catalogue.