After the death of Elizabeth II at her Balmoral residence, all the world’s media have reviewed the great milestones of her very long reign of more than seven decades. What they have not remembered is one of the darkest, most shameful and incredible episodes of her reign: the communist spy that Elizabeth II hid in Buckingham Palace for decades, in a position of relevance and with all the privileges.
His name, Anthony Blunt, a respected professor at Cambridge University who had been recruited by the Soviet Secret Police in 1934 and later appointed head of the Royal Family art gallery, one of the most important in Britain, by the King George VI. His work was so brilliant that, when the monarch died in 1952, his daughter kept him in office, made him her personal adviser on matters of art and, to top it off, knighted him… while continuing to spy for the Kremlin.
It was like that for decades, until Margareth Thatcher came to power in 1979 and decided to take matters into her own hands, uncovering one of the most unusual espionage cases of the entire 20th century. A story that we tell you in the following podcast with the help of Pere Cardona, an expert on the Cold War and author of ‘Bears, Atoms and Spies’ (Principal, 2021).
credits
Script and production: Israel Viana.
edition: Laura Odene.
voiceover: Patxi Fernández and Israel Viana.
collaboration: Pedro Cardona.
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