Have you read John Banville's The Untouchable? He makes his fictionalised Blunt (called Maskell) the son of a NI Anglican bishop. It's a compelling first-person retrospective narration and a spy story at the same time. I used to teach it and it's still one of my favourite novels.
I’ve not! Peter Montgomery’s older brother, Hugh, was a senior Catholic priest (was he gay also?) who the archive links to Robin Bryans in London in early 1950s. I think we can safely say that all these men regretted meeting Bryans.
Some of Maskell's biography is adapted from poet Louis MacNiece's, who was Northern Irish, but the character is obviously Blunt (keeper of the Queen's pictures, Poussin expert). I think this is by far Banville's best novel and the one I would recommend to anyone (I made my husband read it!).
The other one I would recommend is The Book of Evidence (also with an art theme). The Sea, which won the Booker Prize, is all right, but I found its plot predictable and is case of Booker judges over-correcting for an author who really ought to have won before.
Anthony Blunt was exposed in 1979 as having been a spy for the USSR in the 1940s. He is infamous for this, but for much of his life was a Professor of Art History. He was an outwardly respectable ‘establishment’ figure. (2.)
Before we embark on this journey into a lost social world, a warning to non-academics: The history of sexualities is messy. It is not a search for heroes or villains, although they can easily be found. Identities, beliefs, understandings and practices change over time. (3.)
In so far as I’m making an arguement, it’s about social networks and knowledge exchanges amongst homosexual men ‘before gay liberation.’ For these privileged men, N.Ireland was not a place of isolation.
And yes, the figure of Uncle Monty from Withnail and I did sometimes come to mind. (4.)
Perhaps the most elite confirmed queer man in N.Ireland in the mid-twentieth century, Peter Montgomery, was a lifelong friend of Anthony Blunt. Montgomery was a country landowner from Co Tyrone, who had attended Cambridge with Blunt in the 1930s. (5.)
Peter Montgomery pursued a career in the arts, was a classical composer and conductor, and frequently visited Blunt in London. He doubtless introduced Blunt to his own networks in N.Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s. (6.)
Another man, who appears as a minor figure in writings about Anthony Blunt, was Patrick Barbour. Barbour was a wealthy art connoisseur and a member of a family of linen barons from Lisburn. I wrote in History Today about how Barbour narrowly escaped from a gay sex scandal in History Today. (7.)
Comments
And yes, the figure of Uncle Monty from Withnail and I did sometimes come to mind. (4.)