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Auction: 1027 - Autumn Collector's Series
Lot: 955

x India A Remarkable Postcard from the 1933 Mount Everest Expedition to Anthony Blunt, Soviet Spy and Master of the Queen´s Pictures 1933 (19 June) India 1/2a. green card, uprated with 3p. grey, cancelled at Gantok, from Thomas Brocklebank, on the Everest Expedition hand addressed to Anthony Blunt at Trinity College, Cambridge showing a superb strike of the "everest expedition/base camp/1933" triple-ring handstamp in purple, upon arrival showing two postage due h.s. and bearing 2d. Postage Due cancelled with Cambridge oval arrival datestamp (31.7); the message headed "Camp III, Everest" with interesting comments including "we get copies of the Spectator and a bedtime story about Art and All That" and "we are probably abandoning this hill soon - as it´s beaten us hands down or rather the weather has - it´s been pretty unrelenting all the time"; also a small stamp collection and an accompanying letter stating "My friend Anthony Blunt, who is the Manager of the Queens´ Pictures and the Professor of the Courtauld Institute of Art gave then to me. He collected then as a very young boy, when he was in France.". A remarkable assembly. Photo Estimate £ 1,200-1,500 Notes: Anthony Frederick Blunt, born 26 September 1907 in Bournemouth, was a British art historian exposed as a Soviet spy. He read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, switched to Modern Languages, eventually graduating in 1930 with a first class degree. He taught French and was Professor of History of Art at the University of London, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Surveyor of the King´s Pictures. Known as Sir Anthony Blunt, KCVO between 1956 and 1979, he was exposed as a member of the Cambridge Five, a group of spies working for the Soviet Union from the 1930s to the1950s. Following the defection (May 1951) of fellow spies Burgess and Maclean, Blunt came under suspicion as he had been a long time friend of Burgess from their time at Cambridge. He was interrogated by MI5 in 1952 and was interviewed a further eleven times but gave little away. In January 1964, Michael Straight, an American who also studied at Trinity College had become friends with Blunt, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, claimed that Blunt had tried to recruit him to become a Soviet spy. MI5 now equipped with Straight´s story, went to see Blunt again and this time Blunt made a confession. Queen Elizabeth II was informed shortly thereafter. He admitted to being a Soviet agent. In return for Blunt´s full confession, the British government agreed to keep his spying career an official secret for fifteen years, and granted him full immunity from prosecution. Blunt´s role as a Soviet agent was exposed - albeit under a false name - in Andrew Boyle´s book, "Climate of Treason" in 1979 and he was publicly named by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the same year. Queen Elizabeth II stripped Blunt of his knighthood, and he was removed as an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College. John Gaskin, his partner since 1953, threw himself from a sixth-floor balcony but survived. Blunt died from a heart attack at his home in London in 1983, aged 75

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£2,600