Queen Elizabeth II she was not told details of her longtime art adviser’s double life as a Soviet spy because palace officials did not want to heighten her concerns, declassified documents reveal.

Files on royal art historian Anthony Blunt are part of the MI5 intelligence agency’s collection released by Britain’s National Archives on Tuesday. They shed new light on a spy ring linked to Cambridge University in the 1930s, whose members leaked secrets to the Soviet Union from the heart of the British intelligence establishment.

Blunt, who worked at Buckingham Palace as a surveyor for Queen’s Pictures, was under suspicion for years before finally admitting in 1964 that, as a senior MI5 officer during World War II, he had passed classified information to Soviet agents.

In one of the recently released files, an MI5 officer notes that Blunt said he was “deeply relieved” to be freed from the burden. In exchange for the information he provided, Blunt was allowed to keep his job, his knighthood and his social standing – and the Queen was apparently kept in the dark.

In 1972, her private secretary, Martin Charteris, told MI5 chief Michael Hanley that “the Queen did not know and saw no benefit in telling her now; it would only add to her worries and there was nothing that could be done about it.” him.”

The government decided to tell the monarch in 1973, when Blunt was ill, fearing a media uproar after Blunt died and journalists could publish stories without fear of defamation lawsuits.

Charteris reported that she “took it all very calmly and without surprise” and “remembered that he was under suspicion” in the early 1950s. Historian Christopher Andrew says in MI5’s official history that the Queen was previously told about Blunt “generally”.

Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022 at the age of 96.

Blunt was publicly exposed as a spy by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons in November 1979. He was eventually stripped of his knighthood, but was never prosecuted and died in 1983 aged 75.

Files held by Britain’s secret intelligence services usually remain classified for decades, but the agencies are becoming increasingly open. Some of the recently released documents will be featured in an exhibition called “MI5: Official Secrets”, opening later this year at the National Archives in London.

Two Cambridge spies, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, fled to Russia in 1951. A third, Kim Philby, continued to work for the foreign intelligence agency MI6 despite falling under suspicion. As evidence of his duplicity mounted, in January 1963 he was confronted in Beirut by his friend and fellow MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott.

The declassified files include Philby’s typed confession and a transcript of his discussion with Elliott.

In it, Philby admitted to betraying Konstantin Volkov, a KGB officer who tried to defect to the West in 1945, bringing with him details of moles within British intelligence – including Philby himself. As a result of Philby’s intervention, Volkov was kidnapped in Istanbul, returned to Moscow and executed.

Elliott reported that Philby said that if he had his life to live over again, he would probably behave the same way.

“I really felt a huge loyalty to MI6. I was treated very, very well in it and I made some really great friends there,” Philby said, according to the transcript. “But the prevailing inspiration was the other side.”

Philby told Elliott that the choice he faced now that he had been exposed was “between suicide and prosecution”. Instead, he fled to Moscow, where he died in 1988.

The Cambridge spies have inspired countless books, film plays and TV shows, including the 2023 series “A Spy Among Friends,” starring Guy Pearce as Philby and Damian Lewis as Elliott. Blunt appeared in a 2019 episode of The Crown, played by Samuel West.

According to files released in 2014, members of the Cambridge spy ring were seen by their Soviet handlers as hopeless drunks incapable of keeping secrets, the BBC announced.

One passage described Burgess as a man “constantly under the influence of alcohol” and another note described Maclean as “not very good at keeping secrets”, the BBC reported. It was added that he was “constantly drunk” and consumed alcohol.