POPULARITY
Cambridge-educated art historian, Keeper of the Queen's Pictures, expert in French baroque art – and soviet spy? We profile Sir Antony Blunt, an art historian whose youthful political convictions reveal intriguing connections between sexuality and espionage, and whose dramatic life provided the basis for John LeCarrè's classic Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. ----more---- SOURCES: Boyle, Andrew. The Climate of Treason. London: Coronet, 1982. Carter, Miranda. Antony Blunt: His Lives. London: Macmillan, 2001. Costello, John. Mask of Treachery: Spies, Lies, Buggery, and Betrayal. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1988. Lownie, Andrew. Stalin's Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2016. Simkins, John. "Antony Blunt - Spartacus Educational." https://spartacus-educational.com/SSblunt.htm Wright, Peter. Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Secret Intelligence Officer. New York: Penguin Viking, 1987. Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Sean talks to Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, at 'Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer' - the new exhibition at The Queen's Gallery, London
Kirsty Lang talks to Emmy Award-winning actor Brendan Gleeson about his role in new film Calvary; as it opens at London's Apollo theatre, writers Jack Thorne and John Ajvide Lindqvist discuss adapting vampire tale Let the Right One In for the stage; Mary Beard reveals the six shortlisted authors for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, Desmond Shawe-Taylor, discusses the new exhibition The First Georgians: Art & Monarchy 1714-1760, at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace. Producer: Ellie Bury.
Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Curator of the royal Collection; and Anna Somer Cocks, longtime editor of Art Newspaper, address art collecting from a public versus private perspective and its impacts nationally and globally.
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the controversial art critic Brian Sewell. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how he did not go to school until he was 11, hated it when he got there, but managed, much against the wishes of the school, to teach himself history of art. He'll also be describing how he felt when his friend and mentor, Sir Anthony Blunt, the Keeper of the Queen's Pictures, was denounced as a spy in 1979. Sewell was thrust into the public eye as Blunt's protector. He's been there ever since - attacking what he regards as the excesses of contemporary art, and attracting much criticism himself as a result of his attitudes. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Fidelio Aria - 'Komm Hoffnung' by Ludwig van Beethoven Book: Songs from the 1880s with piano accompaniment by Franz Schubert Luxury: Pieta sculpture by Michelangelo