Art historian Anthony Blunt, curator of the royal gallery and Soviet spy

1960: De Gaulle at the Nicolas Poussin exhibition in the Louvre with the Minister of Culture, André Malraux. The exhibition was organised by the Poussin specialist Anthony Blunt (pictured with Elizabeth), a man of remarkable biography. Blunt was a second cousin of Elizabeth II's mother through his own mother, who was a first cousin of the father of the queen consort. It follows that the Queen herself was a second cousin once removed of Sir Anthony, and in 1945 she quite logically invited him, then an adviser to George VI, to become curator of her picture gallery. A knight, the holder of many orders, a professor at the University of London and a distinguished art historian, Blunt was, among other things, a Soviet spy (from as early as 1937) and collaborated actively with the Soviet security services until 1951. Thirteen years later he wrote a penitent letter to MI5 and acquired immunity in exchange for disclosing the details of his work. England learned the truth about its titled spy in 1979, when Thatcher announced it from the parliamentary rostrum. He was stripped of his knighthood but left his professorship, and went on writing and pursuing his scholarship