Piers Blofeld: "Master of Lies" Anthony Blunt @ Southwold Literary Festival

Piers Blofeld is a literary agent & has worked in publishing for the whole of his career.

A regular commentator on the mysteries of the book business, he is a columnist for Writing Magazine.

Born & bred in Norfolk, his surname made it all but inevitable he would nurture a fascination with supervillainy and spying. "Master of Lies" is his first book.For the last two years of WW2, as Anthony Blunt was directly briefing Churchill, his intelligence was also going straight to the desks of both Hitler & Stalin.

Astonishingly, as the world's fate hung in the balance, he was secretly guiding the hand of three of the four most powerful people on the planet.

Based on extensive research & newly released documents, Piers Blofeld reveals for the first time that Anthony Blunt was not simply "the fourth man" in the infamous Cambridge spy ring, but its leader & lynch pin.

Blunt's treason led to tens of thousands of deaths and helped forge the Cold War.

Not only did he lead inquiries into his own crimes, but it was also he who called time on the spy ring with which he will always be associated: stage managing the defections of Maclean, Burgess and Philby.

Incredibly Mi5 were oblivious.

But eventually they would wake up, &, alongside his glittering career as an art historian, Surveyor of the Queen's pictures and Knight of the Realm Blunt's greatest achievement lies in persuading British Intelligence that they had no choice but to collude with him in covering up his crimes.

His was a secret too big to be told.

He alone got away with it & the story of how that happened marks a decisive moment in the history of the secret services in this country - a moment when the intelligence establishment knowingly untethered itself from government oversight.

They lied to the Queen & to successive prime ministers about Blunt, & they did so for decades.

The question is, having got into the habit, have they ever stopped? "Master of Lies" reads like the best jaw-dropping spy-story except here the old adage is true: You couldn't make it up.Unreserved seating.