In 1960, publishers Penguin Books were tried under the Obscene Publications Act for releasing D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. While Penguin won its defence, in his book An English Affair, Richard Davenport-Hines says that the time of the Profumo Affair, women were still sexually oppressed, crushed under the constraints society put on them via their home lives and responsibilities, assumptions about their sexuality and a sexist legal system. Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies rebelled against the gender stereotypes and were castigated because of that.1 Lady Chatterley’s Lover went on to sell two million copies in the eight months after Penguin was found not guilty.
Things were finally but slowly changing, with the help of influential people such as journalist, campaigner and agony aunt Marjorie Proops, who tackled issues such as abortion, addiction and illegitimate babies in her columns. This was not enough though to prevent Keeler being described using language such as gold-digger, common tart and whore. Misogynistic attitudes went unchecked at the time of the Profumo scandal and the Ward trial.
London was certainly changing physically. When Macmillan’s government lifted building restrictions in 1954, the relaxed planning permissions and ready loans meant that twenty-four million square feet of new office space was built in central London in the following decade.2 Davenport-Hines says the buoyant property scene was supported by a bull market from 1958 until the Flash Crash in May 1962. While in 1958, fifty property companies were listed on the London Stock Exchange, in just two years there were about 200, many of them related to the explosion of property development.3
Several high-profile property dealers were caught up in the Profumo scandal. Keeler and Rice-Davies were each the kept mistress of Polish Jew Peter Rachman at one time. Rachman’s name later became synonymous with the intimidation and exploitation of tenants. Keeler and Rice-Davies also had relationships with Charles Clore, a British financier, retail and property magnate, while Keeler may also have slept with Walter Flack, Clore’s business partner. The men were known for their hard-nosed business practices, with Clore known as the person behind the first ever hostile takeover.
The summer of 1961 was a scorcher. London was abuzz with excitement for the Soviet trade and industrial exhibition that was to open in Earl’s Court. The guest of honour was Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who was the first man to journey into outer space. Russia was trending, and so was the interest in espionage, with Ian Fleming’s Dr No selling 437,000 copies in paperback. A film of the book was released the following year and it launched a new genre of secret agent films that flourished in the 1960s.
But international politics didn’t follow a script with a happy ending. In 1961, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev issued an ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of all armed forces from Berlin, including the Western armed forces in the West. The Berlin Crisis culminated in the city’s partition and the building of the Berlin Wall. In October 1961, the Soviet Union exploded a hydrogen bomb of about 58 megatons to international condemnation. The weapon was the single most physically powerful device ever deployed, the most powerful nuclear bomb tested and the largest man-made explosion in history. While it was not intended for use, it was intended as a very serious threat. It was in July 1961 that war minister Profumo was enjoying his weekend at Cliveden and began his pursuit of Keeler, clearly unaffected by all that was going on around him.
In September 1962, William John Vassall, an Admiralty clerk, was arrested for spying after being caught in a homosexual honey-trap. The latest revelation came on top of the defection of diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean and the discovery of the Portland Spy Ring. To quell criticism, the Prime Minister ordered the Radcliffe Tribunal report to investigate the civil service.
Later that year, the UK became involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis, a thirty-five-day confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union in October and November. It was the closest the world came to nuclear conflict during the Cold War period, with the UK the proposed launch pad for American missiles, thus making Britain an immediate target. Macmillan was in constant contact with Washington during the time. The threat of a nuclear attack caused a lot of anxiety to the British public.
By 1963, unemployment had reached a peak of 4 per cent, the highest it had ever been since the post-war year of 1947, and the shaky British economy saw disruptions and work stoppages. This period of economic uncertainty hit amid the coldest winter Europe had experienced in two centuries, with snow remaining in some parts of the UK until April.
The spy stories continued, when in January Kim Philby defected to Russian and was finally outed as a double agent. The government only admitted he was the ‘Third Man’ in the Burgess and Maclean group on 1 July via Parliamentary Privilege. Three weeks later, Ward’s trial began, while the second Bond film, From Russia with Love, opened in Leicester Square in October.
When the Profumo scandal broke, the public’s appetite for salacious gossip about the upper classes had already been whetted by the very public split of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll. The duke, Ian Campbell, had married Ethel ‘Margaret’ Whigham, a glittering society figure, in 1951. Within a few years, the marriage was falling apart, in part due to the abusive behaviour of the duke, who was also an addict. The duke filed for divorce on grounds of infidelity and as evidence produced polaroid pictures stolen from his wife’s locked cabinet. The photographs showed a naked duchess engaged in sex with other men. The duke also presented a list of as many as eighty-eight men with whom he claimed his wife had consorted. At the time, the divorce judge commented that the duchess had indulged in ‘disgusting sexual activities’.
The spy and sex scandals were eagerly covered by the newspaper industry, which was facing its first serious challenge from the proliferation of TV sets. It was the era of chequebook journalism, and the tabloids were still smarting from the imprisonment of two of their number by Macmillan’s government. The establishment was caught with its pants down, the working-class voters wanted freedom from poverty, housing inequity and sexual repression. The government was seemingly inept at managing its own ministers.
The stage was set.
Part I
The Main Players
Chapter 1
John Profumo – A Man Forgiven
On 12 December 1975, Mr John Profumo attended an investiture at Buckingham Palace. The former politician, who was accompanied by his wife to the event, received a CBE from the Queen for his work at Toynbee Hall, the East End settlement for the poor. It might have been an altogether unsurprising honour if it wasn’t for the fact that just twelve years earlier, in June 1963, Profumo had been forced to resign as Secretary of State for War, from the Privy Council and as the MP for Stratford-upon-Avon because of his extra-marital affair with the 19-year-old showgirl Christine Keeler. An affair Profumo had previously denied when he was asked about it in the House of Commons.
Receiving this award was quite the comeback for someone who had lied to the House, cheated on his wife, the actress Valerie Hobson, and also put himself at risk of being compromised by a Russian intelligence officer while holding the office of war minister. His involvement with Keeler, at a time when she was also thought to be dating Soviet naval attaché Captain Yevgeny (Eugene) Ivanov, and his initial refusal to admit it, was also blamed for contributing to the fall of Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government.
But of course, Profumo was no ordinary man. He was in fact the 5th Baron Profumo of Italy, with friends in high places. Not least the Queen herself, who it seems intervened on Profumo’s part when he was allowed to resign from his post rather than face the alternative.1
It was not the only display of how he was forgiven and then lauded by both the aristocracy and the Conservative Party despite the scandal to which he gave his name. In 1995, Margaret Thatcher invited him to her 70th birthday dinner, where he sat next to the Queen. The former Conservative Prime Minister called Profumo ‘one of our national heroes’ and said it was time to forget the Keeler business, as ‘his has been a very good life’.2
In July 2000, Profumo was among the guests at St Paul’s Cathedral for the tribute to the Queen Mother on her 100th birthday.
Another former Prime Minister, this time John Major, attended a formal opening of a new building at the Toynbee Hall complex named after Profumo in November 2003. Major also presented Profumo with a book of tributes to mark his work there. After the event, Profumo was quoted as saying that Toynbee Hall had taught him ‘humility’. In what was his first press interview since the scandal, Profumo told Lord Deedes, a former school friend, for the Daily Telegraph, ‘If you define wealth in monetary terms there’s no hope for the future. It’s only when you realise what you have to give that you become a real person.’3
The following year, Profumo visited 11 Downing Street to accept the Beacon Prize for his charity work and he was also a guest at the Westminster Abbey memorial service for Sir Edward Heath on 8 November 2005. This was his last public appearance before his death in March 2006, at the age of 91. Paying tribute to Profumo, Prime Minister at the time Tony Blair described the ex-minister as a politician who had had a great career but made a serious mistake, after which he had undergone a ‘journey of redemption’, giving support and help to many others.4
Undeniably, Profumo was a valuable asset to Toynbee, described as a ‘master fundraiser with huge energy’. He raised thousands of pounds while volunteering for the social reform charity, heightened its profile, becoming its president from 1982 to 1985. Having been introduced to the charity by the Marchioness of Reading, Profumo helped at Toynbee until the week before his death at London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital following a stroke two days earlier, his loyal and loving family at his bedside.5
The success at Toynbee was no doubt due in some part to his background and his access to the rich and influential. Even Profumo’s early political career was founded on having the right connections. David Margesson, a government Chief Whip, sponsored Profumo when he started out; Margesson was also a guest of John’s parents at their home in Warwickshire.6 In fact, until 1963, Profumo had led a charmed life, as John Profumo’s son David details in his book Bringing the House Down, in which the younger Profumo describes his father’s early years as pleasure-seeking and full of advantage, with an indulgent upbringing.
Even immediately after the scandal of Profumo’s admission that he had lied about his affair and his resulting resignation, Profumo and his family were afforded the privacy and sanctuary the other players in the drama could only dream about. David Profumo tells how, to avoid the press, the family first stayed at Cottage Farm, then in Warwickshire at Ivy Lodge, owned by Peggy Willis, and then at Randolph Churchill’s house in Suffolk. Back at the family home in Chester Terrace, loyal staff remained tight-lipped too.7 When Mr and Mrs Profumo did return to the London address, it was with a police escort.8 The family were safe and protected despite what David Profumo refers to as a desolate time for his parents during which Hobson likely considered leaving her husband and Profumo was forced to resign from the Privy Council before the Queen had to take the unprecedented move of removing him herself.9 Later that summer, the couple flew to Zurich and the family holidayed in the House of Tongue in Scotland, owned by the Countess of Sutherland.
There is some evidence the Profumos were initially shunned by their social circle. Profumo resigned from Boodles and the Other Club, but several influential friends did stay in touch, not least the Queen Mother and Bronwen Astor. The couple received hate mail from the public alongside offers of support, work and the services of a literary agent, and even a note from Noël Coward. It was a fall from grace, yes, but there was a cushion to soften the blow.
Born 30 January 1915, John Denis Profumo was the fourth child of a quiet barrister, Baron Albert Profumo, and an actress and dancer from Edinburgh, Martha Thom Walker. The marriage was happy, and although the couple’s first son had died as a baby, John was to grow up with two elder sisters and a baby brother. An earlier baron (the King of Sardinia had bestowed the barony in 1843) had founded the Provident Life Association company, and when his political career was over, John Profumo benefitted from being able to become the director of his family’s firm. For his parents, however, the existence of Provident Life had meant the family led a comfortable life, moving to Avon Carrow, a grand house in Warwickshire, complete with ‘sizeable staff’. It was a house that became a busy and sociable one, perhaps giving Profumo the taste for a party lifestyle that was to be his political downfall.
As a child, John Profumo was sent first to Sloane Street for schooling and then to a boarding school in Kent, and from there, on to Harrow. He was happy at school, although he was dyslexic10 and enjoyed sport, but was not academic, which is why his son describes Profumo senior’s offer of a place at Oxford’s Brasenose College to read law as a little unexpected. Brasenose was not a scholarly college and was said to be presided over by tutors worse-the-wear for booze, who preferred their undergraduates to achieve sporting Blues rather than first-class honours.11 Later John swapped to study agriculture and political economy and went on to enjoy membership of the Bullingdon Club, polo and point-to-point, hunt balls and cocktail parties. He also learnt to fly while at university and in 1935, the book tells us, as a 21st birthday gift, John was treated to a Grand Tour of Russia and the Far East lasting ten weeks. He also visited the States and Canada.
When Profumo left Oxford, he was awarded a ‘Special Pass’ degree, which his son likens to the type of rosette given out to everyone who takes part in a gymkhana, regardless of their abilities.
After Oxford, however, John Profumo did make a name for himself, when he became the youngest MP in the House of Commons in 1940 at the age of 25. His father died three weeks later, passing on the barony and his fortune. Profumo became fifth baron of the Kingdom of Sardinia and third baron of the United Kingdom of Italy, although he thought using his title would hinder his political career.
This stellar political career had actually started in his final year of university, when he had canvassed and campaigned on behalf of the member for East Fulham, the Hon. W. W. Astor. This friendship was to have a lasting impact on both their lives and reputations.
On his way up, Profumo had spent three months at the League of Nations in Geneva and become the Chair of the Lillie War Conservative Association in Astor’s constituency. At 22, he was running the party’s Warwickshire youth wing and became a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Conservatives. By March 1939, he was adopted as a prospective candidate for Kettering, while in June he signed up as a Territorial and then convinced the party to continue to let him fight the election in uniform. With Labour agreeing not to oppose the seat because of the war, a small turnout (38 per cent) and a quick count, Profumo won an overwhelming majority. Profumo was officially a rising star of the party.
He did, however, arouse hostility when in May 1940 he joined twenty-nine other Conservatives and voted with Labour on his first vote in the House of Commons, against Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement policies. Sixty other Tories chose simply to abstain. The other Tory MPs that voted to censure Chamberlain included Harold Macmillan and Quintin Hogg. It formed a lasting allegiance between Profumo and the other rebels and showed political courage.12
During the war, Profumo served in the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, as an air intelligence liaison officer and then a general staff officer, being posted abroad in 1942. He fought in the battle of Tunis, the invasion of Sicily and the conquest of Italy. He was mentioned in dispatches and in 1944 was awarded a military OBE. By the war’s end in 1945, and after Labour’s general election triumph put him out of his seat, he was promoted to brigadier and worked as chief of staff to the British military mission in the Far East, living in the British Embassy in Tokyo. While he had lost the Kettering seat in 1945 following the Labour landslide, by 1950 he was the MP for Stratford-upon-Avon, and then held junior posts in transport (1952–57), the colonial department (1957–58) and the Foreign Office (1958–60). And in July 1960, Profumo became Secretary of State for War after a Cabinet reshuffle removed Christopher Soames from the role.
John Profumo met his future wife, Valerie Hobson, at the Chelsea Arts Club Ball on New Year’s Eve, 1947. She was the daughter of a naval commander and she’d had a conservative, moral upbringing. At the time, Hobson’s acting career was in the doldrums. It’s accepted that the couple began seeing each other while Hobson was still married to her first husband, although they were openly dating by the Easter of 1949 when they went to Paris together;13 Profumo had also invited Hobson as a celebrity guest to open a charity fete in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1948. The couple did have a cooling-off period when Hobson found herself pregnant by Profumo and opted for a dilation and curettage to terminate her pregnancy.14 Profumo was meanwhile canvassing in Stratford.
During this time, they both made advances in their respective careers, not least Hobson landing the role of Mrs Anna in the London production of The King and I and Profumo making it to Churchill’s front bench in 1952. Hobson had also become pregnant by her estranged husband, having had her second son in April 1951, after which the couple decided to divorce.
However, the couple were eventually reunited, announced their engagement in October 1954 and were married in the Chelsea church St Columbia’s on New Year’s Eve, where a small crowd gathered to watch. The bride wore a grey vicuna suit, finished with sapphire mink cuffs, and a grey silk bonnet. The newlyweds flew to Paris for their honeymoon, with complimentary champagne offered to the entire flight by the head of Heathrow. They stayed at the city’s Ritz hotel.
Authors Knightley and Kennedy believe the wedding was the icing on the cake for Profumo’s political image, with the Conservative Party believing that once married, Profumo had all the necessary attributes to make it to the very top spot.15 The marriage effectively improved his chances of becoming PM.16
Hobson retired from acting shortly before David Profumo was born in October the following year. Hobson was 37 at the time, and Profumo 40. Despite other attempts to fall pregnant, which Hobson spoke of in a posthumous letter to her son, David remained the couple’s only living child. Such was their status as a Golden Couple, the Department of Transport afforded them the number plate PXH1 (Profumo times Hobson equals Number One), and the Foreign Office issued them passports with the numbers 3 and 4.17
By 1959, Profumo was Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, a promotion that some thought put him above his station and youth,18 and by 1960 Macmillan recommended Profumo be sworn of the Privy Council. The couple now enjoyed a VIP lifestyle, attending and hosting many social events. Their Chester Terrace home, leased from the Crown Estates, overlooked Regent’s Park and boasted a forty-foot drawing room, the décor of which had been overseen by a Parisienne interior designer that was very much in favour. Ivory pagodas and a Fabergé bulldog graced the house. Valerie Profumo wore Italian couture paired with stilettos and had a skirt made from python skin.
When Profumo became Secretary of State for War, which was to be his final government role, his challenge was to abolish the system of National Service that had run throughout the war years and instead return the army to a force made up of those that had chosen it as a profession. The National Service Act had been passed in 1947 under the Attlee government and was designed to continue to maintain high levels of military manpower in parts of the world where Britain had ongoing commitments, such as Germany, Palestine and India. It came into force in January 1949 and meant that all physically fit males between the ages of 17 and 21 had to serve in one of the armed forces for an 18-month period. The abolition of National Service was announced in 1957 but actually ended in 1960, with the last national servicemen discharged in 1963.
During his time in office, Profumo and his wife continued to take many outwardly glamorous official trips and diplomatic missions. However, David Profumo suspects that this novelty had begun to wear off for at least his mother, that a rift had begun in their marriage and that Profumo’s openly flirtatious nature and love of partying was beginning to grate on his wife.19
And then, in the summer of 1961, the Profumos went to Cliveden House for the first time. And that was where John Profumo met Christine Keeler.
Chapter 2
Christine Keeler – A Fly in a Web of Deceit?
Cliveden House on the Berkshire/Buckinghamshire border was built in 1666 by the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, as a gift to his mistress. In the 1890s, the stately home first passed into the Astor family when William Waldorf Astor bought the property for $1.25 million. In 1906, his son Waldorf Astor took ownership when he received the Italianate mansion as a wedding gift after marrying Nancy Langhorne. While the house was eventually deeded to the National Trust in 1942, the Astor family continued to live there.
By 1961, the 3rd Viscount Astor, William, more often known as Bill, and his third wife, the former model Bronwen Pugh, often entertained at the property, Bill having inherited the house and the title of viscount on his father’s death in 1952. Bill was particularly pleased with the installation of a heated outdoor swimming pool he had overseen, paid for with prize money when his horse named Ambiguity won the Epsom Oaks.1 In her book, Mandy Rice-Davies describes how the magnificent parklands surrounding the house were home to the nation’s premier collection of rhododendrons2 along with magnificent sweeping lawns and great oaks.
