A Soviet spy stayed in Britain's Queen Elizabeth's palace for years, but no one even got a clue.

A shocking revelation has been made in a file released by Britain's intelligence agency MI5 on Tuesday, January 14, 2025. The file reveals that Anthony Blunt, art advisor to Queen Elizabeth II of England, was a Russian spy. The shocking thing is that the Queen had no clue about this for almost a decade.

These documents of the intelligence agency MI5 were released by the British National Archives on Tuesday 14 January 2025. This file describes a spy gang associated with Cambridge University in the 1930s. This gang worked in collaboration with Russia and its members revealed secrets related to many cities of Britain to the USSR.

spied for Russia

Anthony Blunt was also a member of the Cambridge Five spy gang, who passed on highly classified information to the Soviet Union during World War II and received huge sums of money in return. The file states that Queen Elizabeth II was not told about the secret of her art advisory for a long time. Officials did this because they did not want to increase the Queen's concerns.

How was the Russian spy caught?

Anthony Blunt was Queen Elizabeth's art advisor at Buckingham Palace for many years. When Britain's security officials became suspicious of his activities, he was put under suspicion. After monitoring his activities, he confessed in 1964 that as a senior MI5 officer during the Second World War, he had provided secret information to Russia's spy agency KGB.

Blunt was allowed to keep his job, knighthood, and social status in exchange for admitting he was a spy. Apart from this, the Queen was not told about this for a long time. In 1972, the Queen's private secretary Martin Charteris told M15 chief Michael Hanley that the Queen did not know anything about Anthony Blunt being a spy. He said that there is no use in telling the Queen about this now. This will only increase her worries and nothing can be done about it now.