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Confessions of a Soviet Spy: The Top-Secret Tapes of Anthony Blunt, One Of The ‘Cambridge Five’

By (author) Nigel West

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In April 1964, MI5â€™s most successful molehunter, Arthur Martin, who had been investigating the notorious Cambridge spy-ring since the defections of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean in May 1951, unexpectedly acquired the leverage to persuade Professor Sir Anthony Blunt to confess. At that time Blunt, a celebrated art historian, was director of London Universityâ€™s Courtauld Institute, and was also employed as Keeper of the Queenâ€™s Pictures. Recruited by Stalinâ€™s NKVD in the 1930s while at Cambridge, Blunt infiltrated MI5, Britainâ€™s domestic counterintelligence agency, in 1940\. There, from July that year, he had access to highly classified material, including Allied war plans and counterespionage operations. Blunt passed this intelligence to Moscow, helping the Soviet Union anticipate Western strategies and identify German double agents. His position also allowed him to shield fellow Soviet operatives within Britainâ€™s security apparatus. Bluntâ€™s espionage continued throughout the war, marked by careful discretion and coded communications through Soviet contacts in London. His betrayals contributed to Soviet awareness of Allied intentions during critical stages of the conflict. Armed with a formal immunity from prosecution approved by the Attorney-General, Martin convinced Blunt to cooperate with the Security Service and reveal his networkâ€™s membership and activities, dating back to 1936\. Among his admissions was the disclosure that one of his agents was a senior British intelligence officer, whose wife also worked at MI6â€™s headquarters. The transcripts of those tapes have now been declassified, and Nigel West, with help from Martin, Blunt ,and other participants, has edited them to produce a unique analysis of Britainâ€™s greatest espionage scandal.