Corin Redgrave, scion of the acting dynasty, is following in his father's footsteps and treading the boards at Chichester for the first time.

At the theatre's opening season 40 years ago, Sir Michael Redgrave appeared in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.

Last week, Corin opened his own one-man show, the premiere of Blunt Speaking, about the late Cambridge don, art historian, advisor to the Queen on art, MI5 agent and KGB spy Anthony Blunt.

Blunt, who went to prep school in Seaford, was unmasked as a Soviet spy in 1979. He was immediately stripped of his knighthood and died soon afterwards.

For Corin, 63, whose first draft of the play was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 last year, the essence of the play is the man.

"The play is set over the five days following Blunt's denouncement in Parliament by Margaret Thatcher. Journalists were camped outside his flat. He was left alone to ponder not only his fate but his past and his principles.

"That intrigued me. Not many of us ever find ourselves in that position. Normally, most of our crises we can deal with by talking to friends. But Blunt's friends had deserted him. He was alone."

Corin's first researches led him to his father, Sir Michael who had known Blunt at Cambridge and co-edited a university magazine, The Venture, with him.

Says Corin: "My father knew him quite well and obviously worked with him on the magazine but he said he didn't know him closely.

"Blunt was adept at compartmentalising his life and not letting anything through. Although his homosexuality was well-known, few people knew who his lovers were."

During the war, Blunt joined MI5 and began passing intelligence of German movements and strengths to the Russians, giving them intelligence the British were reluctant to share even when they became allies.

Later, he was the man who tipped off Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, friends and KGB spies, that they were about to be arrested and helped them flee the country.

After the war, he became surveyor to the Queen's pictures, for which he received a knighthood.

At the same time, he became a renowned art historian, a world expert on the work of Poyssin and the man who almost single-handedly turned the Courtauld Institute into the scholarly institute it is today.

Says Corin: "Ultimately, Blunt was the betrayer betrayed. He felt betrayed by Stalin and the Cold War, by MI5 and by the British establishment. He was a rare sort of man and that is what I want to explore in my show."

For tickets, call 01243 781312.