A blunt truth about the British establishment

It is the most revealing insight into the British establishment. A brilliant and treasured art historian, Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures, a knight of the realm, is unmasked as a full-blown, remorseless and persistent Soviet spy.

It happened in 1964, the unmasking of Sir Anthony Blunt, and he was simply allowed to drift on at the heights of establishment life, still presiding over the Queen’s art collection, still pontificating on great masters and the rest.

You and I would have been jailed for life, but not one so eminent. Thankfully, he has left a memoir which is unveiled today at the British Library. At last we shall learn why he did it, how he did it, and the full extent of what he did.

Don’t you believe it. This is 30,000 words of stuff that merely reveals that the old man, on his deathbed in 1983, still hadn’t faced up to the scale of what he’d done.

He tells us all but nothing beyond the exceptional insight enshrined in these words: it was “the biggest mistake of my life”. Well, that’s all right, then.

Could it happen today? You bet it could.