Yes, a KGB Spy Was Living in Buckingham Palace and the True Story Is Messy

Warning: this article contains major spoilers about The Crown season 3! So in the event that you haven’t watched and you want to remain pure, please head here for, hmmm…a collection of super-rare photos of a young Queen Elizabeth.

The Crown season 3 starts out in the least chill way ever: Queen Elizabeth learns that the dude in charge of all her fancy art is secretly a KGB spy and he fully lives at Buckingham Palace. Which, like…WHAT?

This was truly shocking for those of us who weren’t around during the roaring ’60s, and the most mind-blowing part is that IT’S TRUE. On top of all the other sh*t Her Majesty has had to deal with during her reign (hi, Thomas Markle), she literally had a Soviet spy named Anthony Blunt living in her house, which—to put it bluntly hahahahhahaah sorry—has me shook. Here’s what we know about this guy IRL:

He Was a Distant Member of the Royal Family

Anthony’s third cousin was the Queen Mother, aka Queen Elizabeth’s mom. (Which, yes, low-key means that a member of the royal family’s extended family was a spy who committed espionage! Moving on.)

He Was a Prominent Art Historian

When he wasn’t busy being a casual intelligence agent, Anthony was the Surveyor of the Queen’s pictures, which pretty much means he was tasked with maintaining the Queen’s royal collection of art, but it also apparently meant he lived on the premises.

He Was a Member of the Cambridge Five

Whomst, you ask? Oh, ya know, just a group of high society spies working for the Soviet Union between the 1930s and early 1950s. This crew was recruited during their time at the University of Cambridge in the 1930s, and all had high positions in the British Government. Two were diplomats, two were members of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service MI6, and then there was our dude Anthony—who was known as the “Fourth Man” in the ring.

He Got Immunity Once He Was Found Out

Apparently, in 1964, an American named Michael Straight (who we meet in The Crown) claimed that Anthony had tried to recruit him to the KGB. Anthony was subsequently interrogated, and he confessed in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Which, uh, apparently everyone agreed to?

According to the BBC, Blunt was allowed to remain as art adviser to the Queen because “the security services did not want to risk losing his co-operation by forcing him to resign.”

He Was Outed as a Spy in 1979

Everyone found out the truth about Anthony fifteen years after his confession in 1979, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher came clean to the House of Commons. Mere minutes after Thatcher’s statement, Queen Elizabeth II was able to strip Blunt of his knighthood and he made a public confession at the age of 72. He died a few years later at 75.

In July 2009, Blunt’s memoirs became available. In them, he wrote “What I did not realize is that I was so naïve politically that I was not justified in committing myself to any political action of this kind. The atmosphere in Cambridge was so intense, the enthusiasm for any anti-fascist activity was so great, that I made the biggest mistake of my life.”

Yuh, ya think?

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