Anthony Blunt

When Anthony Blunt died in 1983, he was a man about whom almost anything could be - and was - said. As Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures and Director of the Courtauld Institute, Blunt's position was assured until his exposure in 1979 left his reputation in tatters. Miranda Carter's brilliantly insightful biography gives us a vivid portrait of a human paradox. Blunt's totally discrete lives, with their permanent contradictions, serve to remind us that there is no one key to any human being's identity: we are all a series of conflicting selves.

Miranda Carter

"An incredible feat of unmasking and revelation; the result is a meticulous, judicious, and ultimately moving account of Blunt's life....A profound study."--"Newsday
"[A] sympathetic, expertly paced and altogether enthralling biography...Astonishingly assured and accomplished. I haven't enjoyed a biography so much since Judith Thurman's Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette." --"The Washington Post Book World
"Shrewd...well and sympathetically told." --"The New York Review of Books
"[An] excellent case study...Blunt's own evolution [as a spy]...is almost a caricature of the genre, and it is Carter's achievement in Anthony Blunt: His Lives to have promoted it above the commonplace." --"The New York Times Book Review
"[An] insightful new biography." --"The Seattle Times