Newly declassified British documents show that Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t told details of her long-time art adviser's double life as a Soviet spy because palace officials didn’t want to add to her worries.

Queen Elizabeth II was not officially informed for nearly a decade that Anthony Blunt was a Soviet spy, newly declassified documents reveal.

British secret intelligence did not tell Queen Elizabeth II that her royal art adviser confessed to spying for the Soviet Union for almost a decade, according to newly released documents. The revelations come from a large tranche of documents made public by British intelligence service MI5 on Tuesday.

Queen Elizabeth II was not told officially for nearly a decade that one of her most senior courtiers had admitted he was a Soviet spy, newly declassified British files revealed Tuesday.

Queen Elizabeth II was not officially informed for almost a decade that one of her most senior courtiers had confessed to being a Soviet spy, according to newly released MI5 files.

Anthony Blunt, an art historian and the Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures overseeing the official Royal Art Collection, confessed in 1964 that he had been a Soviet agent since the 1930s.

Documents reveal how the monarch was not told the full story about Anthony Blunt, a Soviet mole inside MI5 and member of the Cambridge spy ring, until nearly a decade after his confession

Queen Elizabeth II was not officially informed for nearly a decade that Anthony Blunt was a Soviet spy, newly declassified documents reveal.

Anthony Blunt, who worked at Buckingham Palace as Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, was secretly a Soviet spy during WWII.

Documents newly declassified by MI5, Britain's internal intelligence agency, show the late Queen Elizabeth II was not informed for almost 10 years that a member of her staff had spied for the then-Soviet Union.

Members of the spy ring in the 1930s spilled secrets to the Soviet Union from the heart of the U.K. intelligence establishment.