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nobody knew about it, not even Blunt’s deputy, Oliver Millar, who succeeded him as
Surveyor in 1972. Millar recalled:
From quite early in my time as his deputy the day-to-day running of the office was left to me. He came, in
fact, very seldom to the office in St James’s Palace and I used to go up to the Courtauld for a talk or we
would ring each other up. He was absolutely charming to work with, always encouraging and receptive. He
had the gift of handing over ‘sole charge’ to those whom he trusted and to whom he had given responsibility.
In his early days as Surveyor he had been especially concerned to initiate a programme of conservation –
cleaning and restoration – and to put in hand the compilation of detailed catalogues of the different sections
of the collection. By the time he resigned he had become a rather distant figure, but he had always, so far as I
can remember, avoided big formal occasions… he always got out of it by claiming to be too tired or busy. 12
Elizabeth, therefore, hardly saw the traitor whom she was harbouring within her
gates. The last public occasion with which he was involved was the opening of the
Queen’s Gallery in 1962. It was none the less for her, and indeed for Blunt, a piquant
situation which was perfectly portrayed in Alan Bennett’s 1988 play, A Question of
Attribution. Her acceptance of the Blunt deal certainly saved the establishment a good
deal of embarrassment, as the row which followed the unmasking of Blunt in 1979
showed. The admission of Blunt’s guilt even then was forced out of the then Prime
Minister, Margaret Thatcher, by the revelations of the investigative author Andrew
Boyle, and it was only then that Elizabeth stripped him of his knighthood.
The Profumo affair, coming as it did on the heels of the spy scandals of 1962 and
1963, foreshadowed the end of the Macmillan era. Elizabeth had perhaps learned more
from Macmillan than she had from her previous Prime Ministers. Although he had found
their early contacts at the Tuesday audiences ‘somewhat difficult’ and forced, he came to
lay great store by them and to take care that the discussions should be as full as
possible, sending Elizabeth an agenda of the points he wished to discuss beforehand.
‘This gave Her Majesty an opportunity to consider the issues involved, and frame her
own views,’ his biographer wrote. Macmillan approached Elizabeth in much the same
spirit of formal gallantry which Disraeli had used towards Queen Victoria, with a touch
of Disraelian flourish and occasional floridity in his style. He was genuinely impressed
by the depth of her knowledge, the assiduity with which she absorbed the vast mass of
documentation sent to her and, even after relatively few years on the throne, her
remarkable accumulation of political experience. Apart from the weekly audience they
carried on a frequent correspondence. Macmillan wrote long reports giving her inside
knowledge of events as they happened, particularly when he was abroad at meetings
and conferences. Elizabeth responded in what Macmillan described as ‘a very informed
and informal style’, writing in her own hand and addressing the envelopes herself even
though she had plenty of people to do it for her. Macmillan no doubt exaggerated the
closeness of his relationship with her; he could never resist making a good story out of
his latest sojourn at Windsor or Sandringham to regale and impress friends at the
smarter London clubs or grand country-house parties. At times, he once told
Mountbatten, he ‘almost felt as if he were eavesdropping’; on one occasion he was