Obfuscation obeisance...

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Why feel the need to pay homage to a traitor? Charles Moore's article in the DT today, perhaps following on from a Letter by Jon Ball's (**below) to the DT yesterday (scroll down) and alluded to by Guido this afternoon - albeit with a different point - is more rewriting of history: "When will the BBC ever tell the truth about Anthony Blunt?" 

"What was disgraceful, though, was the structure of the programme. For many, The Reunion's version may be the first they have heard of the subject. It is the duty of the BBC to apply to history the impartiality on which its Charter insists. Yet, as with the same programme's treatment of the 30th anniversary of the Brixton riots (which this column criticised on March 28), the entire panel was on the same side. Blunt was a virtually innocent victim, we were told, and the only villain was the press."

"The Reunion propagated the theory that spying for the Soviets in the Thirties and Forties was nothing worse than an excess of zeal. This is a shocking untruth. Hitler and Stalin were moral equivalents. ... The BBC would (rightly) never dream of making a programme which sought to excuse traitors who worked for the Nazis."

**The Blunt fact. 

SIR – A group of worthies on Radio 4’s The Reunion were concerned that Anthony Blunt may be remembered not as an art historian, but as a spy. They need not worry. Although his Soviet controller was indeed a spy, Blunt himself was not. He was a traitor.