Anthony Blunt: His Lives

Miranda Carter

Editions

Review

When Sir Anthony Blunt was exposed as a former Soviet spy in 1979, the public was, predictably enough, both scandalised and fascinated.

This is the first full biography of Anthony Blunt, and it is a fascinating and very aptly subtitled book.  Some of our customers knew the subject, and their opinions of him differ hugely.  Having read the book, it’s easy to see why: he was a man who betrayed his country to the Soviets, and appeared to believe he was perfectly justified in doing so; he was also a towering figure in the post-war art world, a man who played a great part in building up the Courtauld Institute, who wrote several acclaimed books, and was for a long time Surveyor Of The Queen’s Pictures.  In addition, there was the ‘secret’ life he led as an active homosexual, which, it has been argued, might well have prepared him for a life of deceit.  Whether this is true or not, Miranda Carter wisely avoids trying to explain why it is he became a spy, preferring instead to present the reader with the testimonies of his peers, friends, enemies and interrogators, and also with what Blunt himself said publicly after his exposure.

This is an intelligent and extremely readable biography, in which the wealth of research never drowns the narrative, and there is much of interest far beyond the spy scandals of the Cold War.  Ultimately, however well-disposed Ms Carter is towards her subject (which is the right attitude to have, in my opinion, as hatchet jobs are always boring and inevitably leave the reader sympathetic towards the subject), I don’t believe she can successfully reinvent him as a decent, warm person when the picture which emerges is one of a cold-blooded and arrogant snob.  This is not to deny his achievements as a scholar and a teacher, and many of his former pupils speak of him in the warmest possible terms – but he clearly had a very high opinion of his own opinions!

I have one quibble, which concerns the author’s attitude towards Blunt’s exposure: she expresses surprise at the fact that on the day the scandal broke, and for weeks afterwards, ‘The other stories of the day – the no less extraordinary news that 120,000 men had gone on strike at British Leyland, and that the entire NEC had resigned – were completely eclipsed.’  This, I hope, is disingenuousness rather than ignorance – of course it was a scandal – we all saw photos of a spy talking to the Queen!  And as to the conclusion that Margaret Thatcher was happy to expose him, because, mysteriously, it ‘served the government’s purposes’ – this is scarcely credible.  Mrs Thatcher simply decided she would no longer continue the cover-up accepted by previous administrations; that said, it would be surprising if the government hadn’t tried to turn the news to its own advantage (cf. Jo Moore on September 11th).  And let’s not forget that in 1979, the Soviet Union was by no means the benign former enemy it was to become five or six years later.  Nonetheless, a rewarding and absorbing book, which I strongly recommend. - review by Dan Fenton