Blunt (Anthony)

Typed letter signed ('Anthony Blunt') to Mr H. R. Wackrill, reading "I must apologise for not writing to you before to acknowledge the copy of 'The Inscription over the Gate' which you very kindly sent me, but I have been very busy moving house, or rather flat. I have been very much interested in reading your book. It seems to me a fascinating analysis of the emotions which one feels in front of certain types of painting. I particularly enjoyed your last chapter in which you gather all the threads together. As you know I do not always agree with you when you lay very great emphasis on the importance of the formal element in painting, but it seems to me that in the last chapter you state very clearly the essential problems about Blake's character. I believe myself that they can only been fully solved by a consideration of the historical situation in which he lived - which incidentally also gives the clue to why he is so sympathetic to so many people at the present time. A man whose name I have for the moment forgotten has written what I thought a very intelligent essay on that aspect of Blake, which will I hope be published in the volume of essays which the Artists' International Association are bringing out at Heinemann's. I will send you a notice of it when it appears, as I think it might interest you", one page, some yellowing, folding marks, 4to, The Pond House, Richmond; with original mailing envelope postmarked 29 November 1937.

***Anthony Blunt was a professor of art history at the University of London, the director of the Courtauld Institute of Art and Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures. In 1964, after being offered immunity from prosecution, Blunt confessed to having been a spy for the Soviet Union. He was considered to be the "fourth man" of the Cambridge Five, a group of Cambridge-educated spies who worked for the Soviet Union from some time in the 1930s to at least the early 1950s. He was the fourth member of the group to be discovered; the fifth, John Cairncross was yet to be revealed. The height of Blunt's espionage activity was during World War II, when he passed to the Soviets intelligence about Wehrmacht plans that the British government had decided to withhold from its ally. His confession—a closely guarded secret for years—was revealed publicly by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in November 1979. He was stripped of his knighthood immediately thereafter.