Master of Lies – Anthony Blunt, the Cambridge Spy Who Changed the Course of World War II

Anthony Blunt, the Cambridge spy who served as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, was not just a passive leak of military secrets—he was a master manipulator of intelligence during World War II, deliberately feeding the Nazis disinformation that helped Stalin dominate Eastern Europe and shape the postwar Cold War order. Unlike the more celebrated Kim Philby, Blunt’s true legacy lies not in stealing blueprints, but in orchestrating strategic deception: his intelligence arrived in Germany four hours before the famous Garbo operation, reinforcing the myth that D-Day would target Calais, and later sabotaged Operation Market Garden, contributing directly to 16,000 Allied casualties and the prolongation of the war. Despite being exposed by Margaret Thatcher in 1979, Blunt was shielded by a network of establishment figures who protected him for decades, while the official narrative minimized his role. The real story, as revealed in Piers Blofeld’s *Master of Lies*, is that Blunt’s betrayal wasn’t just about loyalty to the USSR—it was about engineering a geopolitical outcome that served Soviet ambitions, using his position in MI5 to mislead both the Allies and the enemy. The episode exposes how the British intelligence establishment concealed this truth, not out of incompetence, but deliberate cover-up, and how the myth of Philby as the villain was constructed to deflect from Blunt’s deeper, more consequential treachery.