A Question of Attribution is a 1988 one-actstage play, written byAlan Bennett. It focuses on the British art expert and former Soviet agent,Sir Anthony Blunt. It was premiered at theNational Theatre, London, on 1 December 1988, directed bySimon Callow.^[1] The stage version ofAn Englishman Abroad, about Blunt's fellow agentGuy Burgess, was also performed on the same bill. The two plays are collectively calledSingle Spies.^[2]

The play was adapted as a 1991 television film of the same name directed byJohn Schlesinger and broadcast as part of the BBC'sScreen One series. The film was produced byInnes Lloyd, a long-time collaborator of the author in his television work, and is dedicated to his memory in a title card at the beginning of the end credits.^[3]The New York Times called the film a "razor-sharp psychological melodrama" and it won the 1992BAFTA TV award forBest Single Drama.^[4]

The play and subsequent film are based on Blunt's role in theCambridge Spy Ring and, asSurveyor of the Queen's Pictures, personal art adviser to Queen Elizabeth II. It portrays his interrogation by an MI5 officer, his work researching and conserving art works, his role as Director of theCourtauld Institute, and his acquaintance with the Queen. Bennett described the piece as an "inquiry in which the circumstances are imaginary but the pictures are real.^[5]

While supervising the restoration of a dual portrait in which only partial attribution toTitian is thought credible, Blunt discovers a third figure that had been painted over by an unknown artist, and concludes by comparison with a better known triple portrait in London'sNational Gallery (Allegory of Prudence) that the newly revealed third figure was Titian's son. As Blunt's public exposure as a spy in 1979 draws near, the play suggests that he has been made a scapegoat to protect others in the security service. At the end of the film, the time of Blunt's exposure, Blunt tells Chubb that X-rays had revealed the presence of a fourth and fifth man.

One of the sub-texts in the scene with the Queen is whether or not Her Majesty knew that Blunt was a former Soviet spy. They briefly discuss the DutchVermeer forgerHan van Meegeren, and how his paintings now look like fakes, but were accepted as genuine in the (early) 1940s, and touch on the nature of fakes and secrets. After she has left and an assistant asks what they were talking about, Blunt replies "I was talking about art. I'm not sure that she was."^[6]

Source: Playscript and BBC.^[2][3]

The play was adapted for radio in 2006, withEdward Petherbridge as Blunt and Prunella Scales as the Queen in the second.^[7]

• Cambridge Spies, a 2003 BBC TV series about the Cambridge Ring, and how Blunt came to be a Soviet agent.

• Bennett, Alan (1990).Single Spies: Two Plays about Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt; Talking Heads: Six Monologues. New York and London: Summit.ISBN 978-0-671-69249-0.

• A Question of Attribution atIMDb
• BBC profile of John Schlesinger, retrieved 17 January 2006

• BBC television dramas
• Cold War spy films
• Films directed by John Schlesinger
• Plays by Alan Bennett
• Plays set in the United Kingdom
• Plays set in the 1960s
• British plays adapted into films
• Cultural depictions of Elizabeth II
• Cultural depictions of the Cambridge Five
• Biographical plays about British royalty

• Articles with short description
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• Use dmy dates from October 2016
• Use British English from October 2016