Anthony Blunt, who died in 1983, was one of the famous group of Soviet spies recruited in Cambridge in the thirties. Unlike the other three, who defected to the Soviet Union, he remained in England and cooperated with the authorities when he was unmasked in the sixties. The New York Times published a few days ago an article by John Burns to report on Anthony Blunt's memoir made public by the British Library last Thursday: "The memoir offers few new insights into the details of Blunt’s spying, about which he said little in public before he died in 1983. Its main interest, according to historians, lies in Blunt’s account of his recruitment by another Soviet spy, Guy Burgess, when both were at Cambridge University in the 1930s, and in his exposition of his motives and feelings, including his disillusionment with Marxism and the Soviet Union after World War II. The memoir, intended by Blunt as a testament to family and friends, was given to the library in 1984 by the executor of Blunt’s will, John Golding, on the condition that it be kept secret for 25 years." So goes the article... Something was missing. I founded it in the delightful Portable Queer series by Erin McHugh (Secrets and Scandals, Alyson Books, 2008, 120p): "Blunt had made his first trip to Moscow in the mid-1930s, and had connected with the KGB. He was already teaching at Cambridge, and impressionable young men, students, and others (many of whom were homosexual, like Blunt) were eager to join him in working for the Soviets. Among these were two of the other Cambridge Spies, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. Kim Philby, perhaps the most famous of the group (so beloved by the Russians that they even put him on a stamp), was ardently heterosexual, with eventually four wives under his belt, but not so the others. Burgess was a raving alcoholic and a raging queen (and sometime lover of Blunt's), while Maclean played both sides of the street, both with his sex life and his political allegiance."
2009.07.26
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