British intelligence feared that Queen Elizabeth II would learn from journalists about a spy who was operating in the royal palace.. Information about the spy was hidden even after the confession. As it turned out, he was recruited before World War II, began to be suspected in the 50s, and was exposed in the 60s. The Guardian wrote about the circumstances under which Elizabeth II was told about the KGB-ist..

The publication spoke about fragments of a report from British intelligence MI5 on the activities of Soviet spies, some of whom worked right in Buckingham Palace. One of these spies was Anthony Blunt, an art critic and “topographer of the Queen’s photographs.”. Blunt voluntarily admitted cooperation with the USSR in 1964 and received immunity due to this. Revealed documents reveal MI5 were indeed keeping secrets closely. In particular, the Guardian article explained that Elizabeth II learned about the spy only decades later - in 1973. They also talked about the reaction of the queen, who was not even surprised, because she remembered that this man was already under suspicion.

" Apparently someone reminded her of something in the early 1950s,"

It also explains why the media is interested in the fact that the Queen did not know about the revelation. On the one hand, journalists remembered that Blunt was knighted after he admitted to the intelligence services that he worked for the KGB. On the other hand, the Queen was “reluctant to contact him”, and her secretary was generally aware of the interrogations, but did not know about the confession. It is separately noted that even the then Prime Minister Alex Douglas-Home (October 1963 - October 1964), who was told about this by Margaret Thatcher, was not informed about the spy.

The BBC published a fragment of Blunt's confession and a photo of him in his youth. The publication also clarified that the queen was told only because the spy had cancer.. It was expected that he would die, and then Elizabeth II would learn about everything from the media.

The MI5 report, which the British media began to publish, talks about the activities of the Soviet intelligence services and the exposure of the so-called Cambridge Five. The group included the British Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and John Cairncross. All were recruited in the 30s. , and the exposure occurred three decades later - in the 60s.

Focus previously wrote about contacts between spies and Prince Andrew, the scandalous son of Queen Elizabeth II.

In December 2024, the Daily Mail wrote that he was suspected of contacts with Chinese citizen Yang Tengbo. Journalists explained that the Chinese posed as an Anglophile businessman, penetrated into the “high society”, was in contact with Prince Andrew and the former head of the UK Atomic Energy Authority and the Institute of Directors, Lady Barbara Judge..

We remind you that in 2023, the Swiss newspaper Sonntags Zeitung told how the KGB recruited the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill Gundyaev.