Through a unique set of documents never before published, this volume revisits the public furore when, at its Annual General Meeting forty years ago, the British Academy chose not to expel from its Fellowship the eminent art historian, Professor Anthony Blunt, who had recently been exposed as a former Soviet spy.

The facsimile documents illustrate the intensely held views of leading academics as they wrestled with the question of whether considerations of pure scholarship could remain aloof from a revelation of political treachery. Also revealed is one faction's plot to stir up a public row...