The Queen, Her Lover and the Most Notorious Spy in History

by Roland Perry

  Blunt did not have the stomach for finishing his memoir. It lay in his London apartment like a half-eaten sandwich turning stale and inedible. Those concerned about Blunt spilling what he knew need not have worried. Modin would make sure it was misleading propaganda designed to upset Western intelligence and send its agents scurrying down back-alleys that led to a maze or a dead-end. There would be no revelations about Victoria’s affair with Elphinstone or Edward VIII’s Nazi connections, although there would be self-serving, well-worn justifications for spying for both the Soviets and the British against the Nazis in World War II. There would be no mention of the Cambridge Ring’s continued enforced espionage for the KGB long after the war.

  In December 1979, members of the royal household braced themselves when newspapers disclosed elements of Blunt’s royal mission to postwar Germany. The articles were sketchy, more fishing than fact. No details were given. No reporter could reveal anything substantial about what Blunt and Morshead had retrieved. Modin could have written the script for the response from the royal family. It would once more have had ‘silence’ in the title. Being royal it was ‘dignified’. Elizabeth II did not have to tell anyone to shut up. Only her mother knew more than her daughter and she was not about to blab.

  The queen mother’s attitude was on display at a London Christmas lunch in mid-December 1979 at the home of Lady Perth. One member of the party had the courage to ask the queen mother what she thought about this alleged special postwar letter-collecting ‘project’ directed by her late husband.

  ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ she replied with her trademark tilt of the head and smile, which charmed, deflected and warned off further queries. She later indicated that she was fond of Blunt.

  ‘She liked homosexuals,’ her friend intellectual Isaiah Berlin said ‘She liked pansies—queers . . .’

  The queen mother had told him: ‘Oh, well, one can’t blame them [the Cambridge spies] all. A lot of people made terrible mistakes—one shouldn’t really go on persecuting them.’

  It was a sweet sentiment, typical of her caring nature, tolerance and glass half-full approach to life, which sustained her past 100 years. But it was also a hard-nosed cover-up and defence of Blunt, who betrayed the nation before, during and after World War II. Her attitude was very much to put her family’s interests ahead of that of her nation. It was a human and humane attitude that would cause writers and artists and playwrights to salivate over dramatising what comes first: family and friends or country.

  Blunt made many people sigh with relief when he died of a heart attack at his apartment. He was 75. The press hounded him with questions until the day before he died. Several journalists were disappointed they would never receive first-hand answers from him again, even if his objective was to deceive at every turn. But they were in the minority. Many more interested parties were pleased with his passing. In the US, Michael Straight, one of Blunt’s star recruits for the KGB, celebrated. So did Tess and Victor Rothschild as rumours circulated in England that they, together, formed the identity of the fifth entity in the Soviet Ring along with Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt. (In 1986, Thatcher was forced to make a frosty and unconvincing one-paragraph denial in the Commons in which she claimed that MI5 had no information that Victor Rothschild was The Fifth Man.) In Moscow, Modin, now retired, held a quiet wake with other operatives, who appreciated Blunt’s considerable espionage work for them.At the palace, Elizabeth II and the queen mother breathed easier too. The issue over Blunt’s missions for George VI was not buried, but it was less likely to cause concern now that the main participant, whom Elizabeth II loathed and her mother liked, was dead. However, the royals remained aware that the complete and unedited archive of royal letters lay in a vault at KGB headquarters in Moscow.

  POSTSCRIPT

  EXPOSÉ

  Modin, in his seventies in the early 1990s, was suddenly a pauper. With the massive devaluation of the rouble after the collapse of communism, Russian pensions were decimated. Key retired KGB agents such as him found themselves suffering in harsh economic circumstances.The new KGB regime in Moscow decided to let Western journalists into Russia to interview former master-spies, such as Modin, who would command American dollar fees to make up in part for their diminished pension incomes.This was to be organised by the new wave of KGB spies, who believed they were aping Western capitalism by demanding commissions for the interviews. Having lived in England during twelve years of the ‘hottest’ period of the Cold War, from 1973 to 1985, I was intrigued (as many journalists were) to discover who was the Fifth Man in the Cambridge Ring, and investigate other espionage agents. In 1993, I arranged to interview Modin in Moscow. Face-to-face interviews took place in Modin’s Moscow apartment on a daily basis over two weeks. I later wrote The Fifth Man, based on those and other interviews with KGB agents (it was published by Sidgwick & Jackson and Pan Macmillan in 1995). In 1996, I began researching a further member of the Cambridge Ring, American Michael Whitney Straight, who had been recruited by Blunt. In the same year, I returned to Russia with British documentary filmmaker Jack Grossman; Modin agreed to the on-camera interviews for a $US1000 cash fee for his appearances in ten hours of filming over two days. Jack Grossman and I stayed at a hotel in Moscow’s west and took a taxi a few kilometres to the KGB man’s flat in an unprepossessing block. Modin was now a heavy-set man with a thick wave of white hair and a beard.

  ‘He’s the spitting image of Colonel Sanders,’ Grossman whispered to me as he set up his camera.

  Modin had by this time published his autobiography, Mes camarades de Cambridge, brought out by French publisher Laffont in 1994, after decades of advising his double agents to write their own stories. His decision to commit pen to paper himself was another way of earning quick money from eager Western publishers in France, England and the United States. Its ‘revelations’ would also keep Western investigators wandering aimlessly in an espionage labyrinth.

  I asked the Russian about the special missions for George VI that Blunt had made from 1945 to 1947. Modin knew Blunt’s assignment had been made public by British historian Hugh Trevor Roper (Lord Dacre) and elaborated on by a few journalists. But no-one had delved deeply into the reasons for the trips and what was recovered by Blunt for the archives at Windsor Castle.

  ‘What was the correspondence about?’ I asked.

  ‘Royal matters,’ Modin replied in his resonant, sometimes ‘sing-song’ Russian accent, ‘some of them private.’

  ‘Did they include correspondence between the Duke of Windsor and Hitler?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. Much from him to the Nazis.’

  ‘Can I see any of them?’

  ‘That would be impossible.They are classified not for Western eyes.’ Modin paused. ‘I wish to tell you that I shall not give you any more information than Western intelligence already knows.’

  ‘You are assuming I am linked to a Western agency?’

  ‘I must.’

  ‘It doesn’t happen to be true but I understand your position,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it still puts me well ahead of the Western media pack.’

  I probed about the Hitler correspondence. Modin kept blocking and avoiding the questions.

  ‘You know, there is another line of investigation [for you] here,’ Modin told me after fifteen minutes of getting nowhere. ‘There are much more interesting royal letters that were passed to us by Blunt.’

  ‘Can you tell me about any of them?’

  Modin frowned and seemed to be thinking deeply.

  ‘I can tell you about one that Blunt showed us to demonstrate his importance as a palace man.’

  ‘As the king’s art curator?’

  ‘Yes, art curator.’

  ‘Please . . .’ I said, glancing at Grossman.

  ‘The letter was written by Queen Victoria to her daughter. She confesses she had an affair before she was queen.’

  I waited.

  ‘That’s all I can recall,’ Modin said. ‘I read some of the letters, but there
were thousands.’

  ‘So you could have blackmailed the royals?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you ever try?’

  ‘No,’ Modin said with a vigorous shake of the head, ‘we would not do it.’

  With Grossman filming, I saw several other ex-KGB agents, including Vladimir Barkovsky, who had made a study of Blunt’s material at KGB headquarters. Modin helped arrange the meeting and Barkovsky came to the Moscow Hotel at which we were staying. I waited for the Russian in the lobby. After a half-hour wait mid-morning in early October 1996, I noticed a lean, short older man in dark glasses. He wore a beige trench-coat and was carrying a black briefcase. I thought, ‘This is the only person in the lobby who looks like a spy.’ I approached the man and found it was indeed Barkovsky.

  He was not as relaxed or polite as Modin but he was cooperative, explaining he needed the $US500 that he would be given for the half-hour interview to pay for a medical operation on his grandson.

  ‘Our health system is not what it was,’ he complained.‘I have to go private now and it costs.’

  I asked him about the Victoria–Vicky correspondence.

  ‘Yuri tells me you are interested in Victoria’s letters to her daughter in 1860,’ Barkovsky said reaching into his briefcase. ‘I have copies of a sample of these letters. But I can’t let you read them.’

  Barkovsky shuffled photocopies of about ten letters, before he looked up and said: ‘I am able to disclose a little information from one dated 25 July 1860 in which Victoria made a point of “confessing” a relationship before she met Albert. It concerned a member of the House of Lords who was in her royal court.’

  ‘Does she say which lord?’

  ‘I am not at liberty to divulge that.’

  ‘But he was a member of her court?’

  ‘Two courts, two monarchs.’

  ‘Who was the other monarch?’

  ‘That is for you to find out.’

  ‘Are there more references to the “affair”. . .?’

  Barkovsky waved a letter from Victoria at Holyrood Castle, dated 7 August 1860.

  ‘When was the letter written?’

  Barkovsky looked at the letter.

  ‘August seventh, 1860.’

  ‘Is it possible to film any of these copies?’ Grossman asked.

  ‘No, I am sorry. If you discover the name of this lord, please do not divulge that I gave you this information.We have a rule of not disclosing the exact nature of espionage material. We have always paraphrased such material for the intended recipient. In this case, the letters are strictly banned. I am trusting in you because of your connection to Yuri Ivanovitch [Modin], who has found you most reliable.’

  I finished the book on Straight, Last of the Cold War Spies, which was published by Da Capo—after lengthy correspondence with Straight himself—in 2005. Five years later I began an investigation into the veracity of the information in the Victoria–Vicky letters and discovered strong evidence of a relationship between Victoria and the thirteenth Lord Elphinstone. I then examined the Elphinstone archive at the British Library. It ran to 309 files. Library officials estimated that it would take six years intense work to devour them all. I spent several months in 2011 and 2012 cherry-picking relevant files, and discussed them with Grossman, telling him that I had established that Elphinstone and Victoria had had an affair before she became queen. I saw it as a cold case, like the television series.

  ‘A cold case, yes,’ Grossman agreed. ‘Except you do not go back to a murder and a dead body. It’s a state secret so it’s probably well buried. Perhaps the best kept one in the history of the royals.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said,‘Queen Victoria’s secret.’

  Photographic portrait of Victoria’s first lover, the 13th Lord Elphinstone.This was commissioned by Queen Victoria in 1853 just before Elphinstone’s second tour of India as governor, this time of Bombay. He looks wary of the camera. Former Captain of the Royal Horse Guards, John Elphinstone and Victoria were ‘good friends’ and much more over 25 years from 1835 to 1860. Reproduced with permission of Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014.

  Second Love. Portrait of Princess Victoria and Prince Albert at the time of their wedding.Their marriage lasted from 1840 to Albert’s death in 1861. From the collection of the State Library of Victoria.

  Third Love. John Brown, the Scottish servant, who became Queen Victoria’s partner, from 1872 until his death in 1883. Reproduced with permission of Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014.

  Fourth Love. Abdul Karim, the Indian servant and companion who charmed Queen Victoria in the last 14 years of her life—1887-1901. Reproduced with permission of Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014.

  Most intimate relative: Queen Victoria with her first born of nine children,Vicky. They were very close and wrote 4000 letters to each other. Photographic print from the collection of the State Library of NSW.

  The Church of England’s St Peter’s in Limpsfield, Surrey, near the Kent border. The monument to John Elphinstone lies inside the church, and his grave is on the other side of the north-facing wall.

  The life-size monument of the 13th Lord Elphinstone inside St Peter’s was commissioned by Queen Victoria and created by royal sculptor Matthew Noble.

  Author Roland Perry (left) interviewing KGB Masterspy Yuri Ivanovitch Modin in his Moscow apartment. Modin ran the infamous ‘Cambridge Ring’ of spies from 1947 to 1958, and was their KGB Control for the rest of their lives.

  The notorious Anthony Blunt, a member of the Cambridge Ring recruited by the KGB in the 1930s. He became the Royal Art Curator in 1947 and was so for more than 30 years. In 1979 the Queen took away his knighthood when it became public that he had spied for Russia during and after World War Two.

  NOTES

  Ch. 1 A Princess in Peril

  ‘The scales then fell . . .’:Weintraub, Victoria, p.15.

  Ch. 2 The Lover

  ‘A more perfect gentleman . . .’: The Complete Peerage, Elphinstone XIII, 1813, p. 60.

  ‘lame and unable to stand . . .’:Weintraub, Victoria, p. 88; reference to the love affair between Lord E and Victoria, in the UK Dictionary of National Biography; also The Complete Peerage, Elphinstone XIII, 1813, p. 60; Fraser, The Elphinstone Family Book, p. 41;Watson, Kirkintilloch,Town and Parish 1894.

  ‘A romance hung . . .’: Fraser, The Elphinstone Family Book, p. 486; Elphinstone Archive, British Library, Asian Section, Elphinstone [E] Archive, F309.

  ‘very new in the world . . .’ and ‘Now they are quite gone . . .’: Hibbert, Queen Victoria, pp. 38–44;Williams, Becoming Queen, pp. 228–36.

  Ch. 3 Unsuitable Suitors

  ‘extremely crushed and kept’: Longford, Victoria R.I., p. 240

  Ch. 5 Transition to Monarchy

  ‘How are you going on at Madras . . .’: Orange to Lord E, Fraser, The Elphinstone Family Book, p. 487; E Archive; British Library, F87/309.

  ‘I did not leave . . .’: Lord E Diary, 30 November 1836, E Archive, British Library, F87/27.

  ‘I wish to remain . . .’: Royal Archive (RA),Windsor, Queen Victoria’s Journal (QVJ), M7/14 ,

  ‘You are still very young . . .’: RA, M7/52.

  Ch. 6 Elphinstone in Exile: Victoria Victorious

  ‘We were greeted by catamarans . . .’: E Archive, British Library, Letters, F87/27, 6 March 1837; also Fraser, p. 304, The Elphinstone Family Book, F87/309.

  ‘Her name is Husna Ahmed de Crepeney. . .’ References to Husna in personal letters at the time spelt her surname ‘de Crepeney’. Later references use various spellings, including the more conventional ‘de Crespigny’.

  ‘Your departure greatly affected the king . . .’: Prince Hesse, 3 October, 1837. E Archive, British Library, Letters, F87/28; also Fraser, The Elphinstone Family Book, F87/309.

  ‘we want a governor . . .’: Kaye & Malleson, History of the Indian Mutiny of 1857–8, vol. 5, p. 287.

  Ch. 7 T
he Governor’s Distraction

  ‘All the people here . . .’: Longford, Victoria R.I., p. 83.

  ‘The queen always speaks most highly of you . . .’: E Archive, British Library, Letters F87/44, Lord Falkland writing from 14 Curzon Street, London W1, 17 February 1838.

  ‘I hear a new story. . .’: E Archive, British Library, Letters, F87/44.

  ‘This is really too bad . . .’: Longford, Victoria R.I., p. 83.

  Ch. 8 Melbourne Munificent

  ‘Such stories of knowledge . . .’: Boyd, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People?, p. 64.

  Ch. 9 Crowned but Loveless

  ‘An attachment between the two . . .’: The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreigners in India, December 1838, quoting The Times, London, 4 December, 1838.