by antiaristo » Sat Mar 25, 2006 8:09 pm
<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>He was born in Bournemouth, where his father had been a vicar. He studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1930, and became a teacher of French. He became a Fellow of the college in 1932, and in 1965 was Slade Professor of Fine Art in Cambridge. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, a secret society which at that time was Marxist, formed from members of Cambridge University. He was also a homosexual and close aide of Guy Burgess, and it is said he seduced the poet Julian Bell.<br><br>After visiting Russia in 1933, he was in 1934 recruited by the NKVD (forerunner of the KGB). He joined the British Army in 1939 and in 1940 was recruited to MI5, the military intelligence department, where he had access to Ultra intelligence from decrypted Enigma messages. After the war he became director (1947-1974) of the Courtauld Institute of Art.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>In 1945 Blunt became Surveyor of the King's Pictures, and retained the post under Queen Elizabeth II, for which work he was knighted in 1956. He retained the post until <!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="font-size:medium;">1972</span><!--EZCODE FONT END--></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->. He was particularly knowledgeable on the works of Nicolas Poussin. Interested in architecture, he attended a summer school in Sicily in 1965; this led to a deep interest in Sicilian architecture, and in 1968 he wrote the only authoritative and in-depth book on Sicilian Baroque.<br><br>Blunt is frequently spoken of as a distant relative of Queen Mary (Mary of Teck), generally Prince Michael of Hesse is given as their common cousin, however the exact lineage is never produced. <!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="font-size:medium;"><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>He was however demonstrably a cousin of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the late Queen Mother</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></span><!--EZCODE FONT END-->, through his mother, Hilda V. Master, daughter of Gertrude Mosley-Master, the daughter of Frances Mary Smith, sister of Oswald Smith, father of Frances Dora Smith, mother of Claude George Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, father of Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, making Blunt and the Queen Mother third cousins, through the Smith family.<br><br>In <!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="font-size:medium;"><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>1963</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></span><!--EZCODE FONT END--> MI5 learned of his espionage from an American, Michael Straight, whom he had recruited. Blunt confessed to MI5 on April 23, 1964, but his spying career remained an <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>official secret</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> until he was publicly named by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979. His knighthood was immediately revoked, followed by his honorary fellowship of Trinity College. According to MI5 papers released in 2002, that agency had been told by writer Lady Moura Budberg in 1950 that Blunt was a member of the Communist Party, but the information was ignored.<br><br>He was the brother of writer Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt and of numismatist Christopher Evelyn Blunt.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Blunt">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Blunt</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br> <p></p><i></i>