> Before being outed as a Soviet spy, an Englishman by the name of Anthony Blunthad a distinguished career in which position?And the answer: art historian. Sir Anthony Blunt was one of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring that operated fortwo decades, including during World War II. He was also a renowned art scholar,and worked in Buckingham Palace until the 1970s.Photo credit: fair use.Anthony Blunt was known for his clever ploy against theBritish government. While a university student in Cambridge in the 1930s, hebefriended a group of other disaffected young men (among them was the futureCambridge Five leader Guy Burgess). After university, Blunt rose in the ranks ofscholarly art historians, all the way to be appointed as surveyor of the king’s(later the queen’s) pictures in 1945. Then, two years later, he became directorof The Courtauld Institute of Art, one of the world’s leading centers oftraining and research in art history.Prior to these appointments, however, he was recruited as a spy by the SovietUnion, along with his university friends. In World War II he was a member ofMI-5, the military intelligence operation, giving him access to sensitiveinformation the Soviets wanted.Even though Blunt's active espionage work ended in 1945, he maintained hisSoviet connections into 1951, and even arranged the escape of several otherBritish spies for the Soviet Union in that time. It wasn't until 1964 that theBritish government confronted Blunt on his espionage, and achieved a secretconfession. Another 15 years would pass before the confession went public,receiving national outrage. Blunt was stripped of his knighthood. At his pressconference in 1979, Blunt commented:> "This was a gradual process and I find it very difficult to analyze. It is,after all, more than 30 years ago. But it was the information that came outimmediately after the war. During the war one was simply thinking of them asAllies et cetera, but then with the information about the camps... it wasepisodes of that kind."Learn more about Anthony Blunt here[https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a29310542/anthony-blunt-queen-elizabeth-the-crown-curator-russian-spy-true-story/].