The Crown's story is rooted in fact, but takes plenty of liberties. Just how tense were things between the Queen's husband and a Soviet spy? Robert also points out that the Queen had red boxes crammed with confidential government documents delivered to her. Was Jack the Ripper a member of the royal family? The Crown introduces a curious new figure in season three: a buttoned-up curator, well-practiced in the art of espionage.The Crown Got It Right: Anthony BluntAnthony BluntAnthony Frederick . His escape from punishment was later rescinded, however, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher exposed his role as a Communist spy in the House of Commons in 1979, which ultimately saw the Queen strip Blunt of his knighthood. According to the Times, a spy inside the KGB wrote at the time that "the Russians had in fact received a lot of useful information from Profumo from Christine Keeler, with whom Ivanov had established contact, and in whose apartment Ivanov had even been able to lay on eavesdropping operations at appropriate times. The espionage story was only broken to the world in 1979, by the late Margaret Thatcher. He threatened the Prince Philip for accusing him of betraying his nation. Michael Straight, an American whom Blunt had attempted to recruit at Cambridge, informed British intelligence of Blunts espionage after years of wrestling with the knowledge. ", Other historians dispute this, however. Guy Burgess (left) and Donald Maclean (right). All rights reserved. Royals Declassified | Channel 4 20th November 1979: Anthony Blunt at a press conference following revelations that he was the fourth man in the Burgess, Maclean, Philby spy scandal of the 1950's. But did Anthony Blunt really threaten Philip in this way? The Crown's first two seasons relegated Lord Mountbatten into this embarrassing Philip relation. Blunt, also a distant cousin of the Queens, was recruited, according to Radio Times, to be a Russian spy while studying at Cambridge and passed information to Russian handlers. In her biography of Blunt, Anthony Blunt: His Lives, Miranda Carter notes that in 1963, the art historian may have stepped out of his semi-retirement to help the royal family out of a bind. Prince Philip's love of racy London society found him vulnerable to He was also an MI5 agent. Elizabeth did agree to let filmmakers follow the family for an entire year, and the resulting two-part series aired on the BBC and ITV in 1969, with subsequent airings in the U.S. and Australia. On the other hand, The Crown doesn't play around with history when reenacting one of the most horrible tragedies of the 1960s in Wales, the Aberfan mining disaster. The fact he had spared the Windsors humiliation endeared him to the royal household and in 1945 he was given the respected title of Surveyor of the Kings Pictures. At the time, it wasn't uncommon for liberal, college-educated youth to be sympathetic to the Communist party.

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