An Oxford book-binding firm has won an £80,000 contract to restore a valuable collection of books that belonged to Cambridge spy Anthony Blunt.

Restoration work on the Blunt Collection is being co-ordinated by Roy Thomson, chief executive of the Leather Conservation Centre, pictured left with Ian Barnes and paper conservator Louise Drover

Temple Bookbinders, of Quarry Lane, Headington, has been asked to rebind about 400 volumes from the Blunt Collection -- the former double agent's library of rare books, now owned by the Courtauld Institute, London.

Ian Barnes, who set up the book-binding company five years ago, said the contract offered financial security and showed his firm was now recognised internationally for quality work.

"Big collections like this don't come up very often," he said.

"It's definitely a feather in our cap and satisfying to keep book-binding work in Oxford. There aren't many people still doing this sort of work and we're always on the look-out for staff."

The library comprises more than 600 books, mostly about art and architecture. Some are hundreds of years old.

The restoration work coincides with BBC2's launch on May 9 of its historical drama series, Cambridge Spies, about Blunt and his 1930s Cambridge contemporaries who spied for the Soviet Union.

He was appointed Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures in 1945, but was stripped of a knighthood in 1979 when his treachery was exposed.