Over the weekend of 8 and 9 July that year, Bill and Bronwen, who was five months pregnant at the time, played host to several influential guests. These included Field Marshall Ayub Khan, the President of Pakistan, who was en route to meeting President Kennedy in Washington. Others there over that weekend included Lord Mountbatten, his daughter and son-in-law Pamela and David Hicks, Sir Robert Lancaster, his son the cartoonist Osbert Lancaster and his wife, government economic advisor Sir Roy Harrod, Lord and Lady Dalkeith, the former Polish countess Sophie Moss, a fashionable interior designer named Derek Patmore, and artist and set designer Felix Kelly. It was this weekend that John Profumo and his wife were on the guest list for the first time, and while others came and went for various lunches and dinners, the Profumos stayed the whole weekend. It was a weekend that would change the course of history.

Within the estate and a mile along the River Thames was a property called Spring Cottage. Rice-Davies says it was a gabled residence that was built on the riverbank with a top floor that stuck out so that it extended over the river itself.3 Bill Astor had let out the double-fronted cottage to osteopath Stephen Ward since 1956. Bill suffered from crippling migraines and neuritis and had used Ward since 1949 after the two had been introduced by Astor’s half-brother Bobbie Shaw. Since Bill particularly liked to be treated after hunting on Saturdays, it was useful to have Ward so close by.4

Knightley and Kennedy say that Astor and Ward had grown close over the years and that Ward was a frequent guest at Cliveden and that Bill’s second wife, Philippa Astor, looked on Ward as a friend too. When Ward took over Spring Cottage, it had been dilapidated and damp and the garden was a wilderness. Ward spent his weekends turning the place into a home with his then girlfriend Margaret Brown, a successful model. The friends that visited Ward mucked in, making do with the limited facilities the cottage offered. These exciting people drew Astor himself to the cottage, since he cut a lonely figure and had little else in his life. But it was a reciprocal arrangement, as in return for entertaining him at the rental property, Astor would invite Ward and Brown to the parties at the main house, where Ward would often sit near Nancy Astor as they got on well together. Astor also allowed friends to use Cliveden for private parties, and Ward would be invited to these events too.5

Ward was also hosting a party at this cottage that weekend in July, and it had been established that Ward and his guests could use the pool of the main house. Alongside Sally Norie, Ward’s girlfriend at the time, one of Ward’s guests on the same the evening that the Profumos visited the big house was Christine Keeler. Keeler’s name is now synonymous with scandal, with the film of her relationship with John Profumo (or Jack as she and his social circle referred to him as) being titled exactly that.

But who was Christine Keeler, and how did she become the girl at the centre of one of the most notable scandals in British history?

For Christine Keeler, the story behind the Profumo Affair starts with her job at Murray’s,6 a Soho cabaret club she began working at as a showgirl after she moved to London in 1959. The audience was largely wealthy and influential and was often made up of the aristocracy. It was also where she met Stephen Ward, who was a guest of a rich Arab, Ahmed Kanu, whom Keeler knew. Ward was to become her guru, and what she calls a ‘Svengali’.7

Keeler’s mother, Julie Payne, who was living with her own parents after being abandoned by her husband and Keeler’s father Colin, initially brought up Christine alone. Later, when she was about 4 years old, Keeler moved to two unheated converted railway carriages in Hythe End Road, Wraysbury, Berkshire, with her mother and her (eventual) stepfather Edward Huish. It was an uneasy relationship, and home comforts were sparse. There was no bathroom and no hot water in the home, lighting came from oil lamps and her mother cooked on a fire for several years until electricity was connected. She spent her days on her push bike and in the outdoors, being sent away to a Littlehampton holiday home aged nine because a school inspector decided she was malnourished.

She was aware of unwanted male attention from an early age. Knightley and Kennedy say that Keeler, in a tiny but homemade bikini, was the main draw for the many swimming parties the local youths had at abandoned gravel pits in the summer months. By the time she was 16, they tell us she had been ejected from more than one local pub for being intoxicated.

Despite being academically capable, Keeler was not encouraged to work hard at school and at 15 left to start the first of several office typing jobs, which she hated. At various intervals she tried modelling, appearing in Tit-Bits in 1958. Instead of office work, she switched to minding the home, freeing up her mother to go out to work to bring some money in instead. For several years, Keeler bounced between failed relationships and jobs, trying to find her place in the world. After a DIY abortion went wrong, when she was 16 Keeler gave birth to a baby boy in Old Windsor hospital. His father was an American serviceman stationed at the Laleham air base.8 The baby died at six days old. When she left hospital, and with relations with her parents at an all-time low, Keeler headed off to London, and after a spell in a gown shop and as a waitress, Keeler ended up at the members-only cabaret club Murray’s.

Nightclubs were an easy road to big profits for their owners, explains Davenport-Hines,9 and Oswald Murray opened Keeler’s workplace in Beak Street in the 1930s. It worked on a bottle party system to avoid the strict licensing laws that prohibited alcohol sales after 11.00 pm. Invited clientele would order ahead so that they could circumvent the rules. The club had a spot-lit revolving stage but as at the time the law required strippers to remain absolutely still, while some clothed employees did the dancing, others, like Keeler, would stay topless and motionless at the back. The club employed forty-five women, with hundreds more waiting to fill any vacancy.10

It was there at Murray’s, earning £8 10s a week, that Keeler met Ward.

In her book, Keeler describes how Ward, who was thirty years her senior, actively pursued her, although not for a romantic relationship, asking for her phone number and to meet up relentlessly. At one point, Ward even drove out to Wraysbury when she was on a trip home where he easily charmed her mother and stepfather into allowing her to head off to his cottage at Cliveden with him. Keeler admits that Ward was well connected and that through being friends with him she hoped she might find more modelling opportunities through his large and impressive social circles; however, she also, in hindsight, refers to him as manipulative. She was also well aware that Ward enjoyed having young, attractive women by his side more as a social lubricant than to enjoy their company. Many of Ward’s connections perhaps saw Ward as a way to meet and develop relationships with these women.

Knightley and Kennedy think Keeler may have looked on Ward as a father figure.11

Despite her misgivings when they first met, however, Keeler moved into Ward’s flat in Bayswater’s Orme Court and often spent the weekend at Cliveden with him too. She knew that Ward enjoyed the gossip of illicit relationships and the power afforded to him when he caught his friends and associates out for their indiscretions but she considered Ward a friend.12 However, after being coerced into to attending an orgy, and when Ward suggested they marry for convenience and companionship, Keeler instead moved out and started a relationship with the infamous London landlord Peter Rachman, whom Ward had introduced her to along the way and who owned a flat she and Ward had considered renting.

At just 17, Keeler moved into a flat in Bryanston Mews that Rachman owned. Rachman supplied Keeler with expensive clothes, paid for her hairdresser, bought her gifts and a white sports car so she could visit her friends. Rachman visited Keeler every lunchtime for perfunctory sex that she didn’t enjoy,13 insisting on a position that ensured she had her back towards him during intercourse.14 Much later, in her book Scandal, Keeler likened the way Rachman made love to the way someone might brush their teeth, with her simply playing the part of the toothpaste. Keeler also hoped the influential Rachman, with his contacts and his endless money to pay for clothes and haircuts and a professional portfolio, would help her modelling career advance.

After six months of being Rachman’s mistress, Keeler resumed an affair with an old boyfriend, but Rachman found out. The relationship with Rachman ended, Keeler returned to performing at Murray’s and moved back in with Ward, who was now living in Wimpole Mews. At work she became pals with Mandy Rice-Davies, the daughter of a policeman, who had worked at Murray’s since she left home in Birmingham when she was 16.

Later the new friends teamed up together, leaving Murray’s in the hope of finding fame and fortune, flat-sharing and concentrating on their social life, like any young girls would. Keeler reconnected with Ward and Rice-Davies became part of his circle too, having slept with Ward on one occasion but remaining friends. Ward also introduced Rice-Davies to Bill Astor. After another failed relationship ended and now that she was no longer flat-sharing with Rice-Davies, Keeler turned again to Ward for support. Keeler moved in to occupy the smaller of the two bedrooms there and their lives became entwined again.

Rice-Davies confirms there was never anything sexual between Ward and Keeler, instead saying that the two friends were exceptionally close, and that when together their eccentricities meant that they ended up behaving in a questionable and immature way.15

Ward and Keeler’s escapades together took them to Notting Hill, which in 1961 was a troubled area of London. Rice-Davies said the two friends liked to go to downmarket areas and that Christine needed to go the black clubs to obtain pot.16 While in the El Rio café buying drugs, Keeler gave her number to a West Indian called Aloysius Gordon, known as ‘Lucky’ because his parents had won £4,000 in a lottery the day he was born. She agreed to go on a later date with the man, who earnt a living singing at the Notting Hill and Soho clubs, if he brought along a black woman for Ward. The date went ahead but was cut short when Keeler felt worse for wear after smoking weed, and the next time they met up, Lucky, who had a long criminal record, held Keeler captive, raping her for twenty-four hours. Although she sweet-talked her way out of his flat, Keeler was far from free of Gordon, who began harassing her, and kept a constant watch on her wherever she went. In her book, Keeler explains that at this point she now believes Ward was deliberately putting her in danger by encouraging her connection with Lucky and used a later incident when Lucky assaulted Keeler at their flat to suggest to the police that Keeler was a regular drug user and a degenerate.17

However, at the time Keeler says was still unaware of how she was being manipulated, and continued to enjoy her time with Ward, including the weekend jaunts to the cottage at Cliveden. One such weekend, Keeler headed to meet Ward in his cottage, taking along a male friend and a picking up a female to make up the numbers along the way. It was 8 July 1961, and the hottest weekend of that year so far, and also the weekend the Profumos were being entertained by the Astors at the larger house. A chance meeting by the now infamous Cliveden swimming pool meant that John Profumo would meet Christine Keeler as she was skinny dipping there. A light-hearted game of grabbing the small towel Keeler had access to then ensued, until more guests arrived at the scene and Keeler made a hasty retreat back to Ward’s accommodation. Before she left, however, Ward and his guests were invited to the main house for drinks. Later that night, Profumo volunteered to give Keeler a personal tour of the house,18 using the opportunity to flirt.

When she wrote about the incident in her book, Keeler makes it clear that she later realised Ward had a clear plan to use her to find out about the Polaris missile programme through her intimacy with Profumo.19 She also believes that Ward was already using his connection with Bill Astor to discover details about the delivery of nuclear weapons to Germany, adding that on the weekend in question, Ward stole some letters he found at Cliveden.20 Keeler thinks on their return to London on the Saturday morning Ward began to put into motion a plan to further involve her in his work and use her as a way to cover his own tracks, making various phone calls to his spy ring contacts. The plan included a return to Cliveden on the Sunday, taking along a friend and Keeler’s love interest Noel Howard-Jones, as well as Soviet naval attaché Eugene Ivanov, who Keeler says was an intelligence office for the Russians that Ward was already working with. The party would be completed with two of Ward’s girlfriends.

Upon their arrival, Ward’s party made their way to the Astors’ swimming pool, where they would re-join the weekend guests from the main house. That day, Keeler seems to have caught the attention of two of the men present, one John Profumo and one Eugene Ivanov.

Chapter 3

Ivanov – The Love Triangle is Complete

Captain Yevgeny (Eugene) Ivanov was an assistant Russian Naval Attaché at the Russian Embassy in London and had arrived in England on 27 March 1960. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was also a spy, a fact he readily admits in his autobiography.

When he first arrived at the London Soviet Embassy, Ivanov was greeted warmly. Not only had he been selected to receive the prestigious intelligence training given by the Russian military intelligence unit, GRU, but he was married to the daughter of the chair of the Soviet Supreme Court, Alexander Gorkin. By his marriage, Ivanov was also the brother-in-law of Colonel Konstantinov, who ran the GRU intelligence base in London.1

Despite his unwavering belief in communism, Ivanov was considered quite the partygoer in London, known for a love of drinking and playing bridge, and for being a playboy character.2 Although Ivanov came to the UK with his wife, Maya, according to MI5 files in the National Archives, the fact he was a ladies’ man was accepted within the marriage.3 From his arrival, he was readily involved in Embassy social life, playing volleyball, hosting parties alongside his pretty and amusing wife and spending weekends at the Embassy’s retreat in Hawkhurst, Kent.4

Ivanov dressed to impress. Shirts and shoes from Barkers, suits and ties from Harrods and Christian Dior colognes. There’s even a story that he wanted a pet alligator and visited Harrods in August 1962 to get one.5

Since he was quite obviously an intelligence officer, as Ivanov himself admits, he knew he would be under surveillance by the British. This didn’t stop him rapidly ingratiating himself into the London set. His friendship with Ward meant that the two of them met frequently and socialised extensively together. Ivanov was known to spontaneously call on Ward, and an impromptu trip to a club, to play bridge, or to eat with one of Ward’s friends would ensue.6 Teaming up with Ward meant Ivanov’s excellent English improved further, as did his bridge playing. Sometimes the two men found themselves misbehaving.7

It wasn’t unusual for Ivanov to visit Cliveden, or other English homes. Ivanov spent his last Christmas in England at the Buckinghamshire country house of Lord and Lady Ednam. Lady Ednam was previously known as Maureen Swanson and was a good friend of Ward. The couple liked Ivanov and had played bridge and dined together. Knightley and Kennedy say that Ivanov was unique in his success at infiltrating such a large and influential group of friends and acquaintances.8 In return for his introductions to society, Ward was a frequent guest at Soviet Embassy parties.

On the weekend in question, Ward invited Ivanov to Cliveden, although from the outset it was known that the Russian had to leave earlier than the rest of the party for a return trip to London.

Keeler had met Ivanov at Ward’s flat, where he often bought gifts of vodka and caviar. It was Ivanov who ended up taking Keeler home that weekend, driving her back to the home she shared with Ward, with both then reputedly drinking spirits and sleeping together.9

For Christine’s part, it seems she was put out Howard-Jones had arrived at Cliveden with a beautiful woman that she was instantly jealous of. While Howard-Jones and Keeler had had a brief affair that lasted a couple of months, later he said he’d struggled to make conversation with Keeler and found her disappointingly dull in bed.10 Howard-Jones’s indifference made Keeler happy to leave with Eugene. She found Ivanov both a boring conversationalist and unenthusiastic lover that night but believed that Ivanov pushed to have sex with her purely because Ward had told him to do it.11 In Keeler’s mind, as Ivanov’s lover, this would mean she would be implicated as part of the spy ring.

Rice-Davies believes that Keeler found Ivanov very attractive long before this weekend, however, adding that the Russian visited the Wimpole Mews flat every day.12 She adds that he was one of the most charming people she had ever met, likening his good looks to that of James Bond. She also says he was very easy to talk to, funny, kind and genial.13 She herself enjoyed discussing Russia and communism with him, although discussing political ideology was new to her.

When Ward returned on Monday, Keeler says he quizzed her about the experience and later relayed the intimate details to a later female guest.14 Ward also told Keeler he had given Profumo her number and was desperate to encourage her to date him.

Just two days later, Ivanov and the Profumos would meet again at a reception at the Russian Embassy held in honour of Major Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut to return from space. Profumo had already contacted Keeler and taken her out. Ward was also invited to the lavish reception. It seems Profumo, Ivanov and Ward were always to be in each other’s orbits.

According to Keeler, Ivanov disappeared from London on 29 January 1963.15 Mandy Rice-Davies says that Ivanov called Ward’s flat on the night of the Edgecombe shooting, and, since Ward was not there, she spoke to him and told him what had happened. After that, Rice says that Ivanov didn’t call back, and never saw Stephen again.16 Could he guess what was to come?

The Denning Report included details of Ivanov’s departure, noting that leaving England may have been accelerated due to the events. Many people have suggested that this was because he could no longer continue his espionage work once his role in the Profumo Affair came to light. However, at least one person disagreed with that enough to call into the Metropolitan Police. National Archive files have a record of a Surrey resident, Mr Colin Wilton-Davies, a scientist, recounting a conversation he had with Ivanov after meeting him at a reception given by the Congress of Underwater Activities. When Wilton-Davies spoke to Ivanov, in early October 1962, Ivanov said then that he expected to return to Russian in about three months, meaning that his return to Russia in January 1963 was pre-planned and it was a coincidence that it occurred when Profumo was exposed.17

In 1992, Ivanov’s version of events was published in a book. While the foreword explains it was Gennady Sokolov who wrote the book, the details within the pages come from taped conversations between Sokolov and Ivanov dating from 1988 to 1991. Surrounded by controversy, Sokolov says the former GRU agent showed great courage in discussing his past. Since retired GRU officers are forbidden from revealing information, some names have been changed, and certain details and facts omitted. Sokolov also hinted that the need for secrecy may also be connected to the fact that agents recruited by Ivanov in Britain in the 1960s might still be active spies at the time of publication.

Sokolov admits that the contents of the book cannot be proved or corroborated, and that the word of a professional spy is, by its very nature, subject to suspicion. Ivanov was often ill during the six-year period that the book was researched, and Ivanov’s battle with alcohol did affect him physically, including memory problems. The First Deputy Chief of the GRU at the time said that Sokolov’s book was evil and dangerous. Writing from Moscow, Sokolov, however, says in the foreword that the book is the first testimony about the part Russia played in the Profumo Affair.18

Ivanov’s account of his life as a spy seems to be a brutally honest one. He freely admits that when he worked for the Russian government, he believed in the Communist Party. He says he was proud that his country had beaten fascism and sent a sputnik into outer space. However, later in his life he struggled when he learnt the truth about Stalin’s tyrannical rule, making him feel bitter. Thus, he had trouble reconciling his early ideals and his past with how he felt about the party.

Born in January 1926, Ivanov grew up in the town of Pskov. His mother was one of the nobility but his father was a peasant. His mother had been deprived of her rank in the 1917 revolution and so, as an orphan, worked in a tobacco factory to look after herself and a younger sister. It was here she met her future husband, by then a recruit in the Red Army. The marriage was peaceful and happy. With a father in the military, Ivanov got used to moving often, learning to make new friends and speak new languages regularly. He also picked up a love of machinery and could drive, operate a radio station and shoot a gun from a young age. From there, he became a cadet in the Red Navy School and was later admitted to the elite military diplomatic academy, which trained secret service personnel. He had officially started his career in the field of intelligence.

Writing of the Profumo Affair, Ivanov’s book says the scandal remains relevant because of the mix of politics, espionage, sex and the blighted careers of many high-ranking individuals. He must count his own development among those jobs affected, as it appears he was recalled to Moscow when the scandal hit the headlines. The Russian connection to the scandal remained a secret until his book was published, claims Ivanov, who believes the establishments in Britain, Norway (where Ivanov was also posted for a time) and the old Soviet Union deliberately concealed it.

Interestingly, Ivanov says it was a member of the establishment that caused much of the trouble, without even realising. Newspaper editor Sir Colin Coote gave Ivanov access to senior officials, he says, simply by introducing him to Stephen Ward, something he never asked Coote to do. Without his introduction to Ward, Ivanov would not have gained access to Cliveden and gone on to make the acquaintance of lords, ministers, councillors and businessmen.

Ivanov met Coote at a Soviet Embassy party in early November 1960, as he struggled to make headway getting an ‘in’ to the British way of life. Desperate to please his Moscow bosses, ahead of the event that celebrated the anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution in his homeland, Ivanov had studied the guestlist closely, identifying those individuals who could be useful to him and preparing conversation-starters. Through the event, he hoped to establish a contact that would help him to discover the strategic and operational plans of NATO countries and the British government, and how the military forces of the UK and the USA were working together.

One such person was the managing editor of the Daily Telegraph, who Ivanov knew was a member of the prestigious Other Club, a dining club co-founded in 1911 by Churchill, which also counted John Profumo as one of its members alongside Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Prime Minister Harold MacMillan. Not surprisingly, Ivanov was keen to break into this particular social circle and successfully engaged Sir Colin in conversation at the party. Just a week later, Colin Coote was happily showing Ivanov around the printing presses, which gave the Russian the chance to find out that Coote had fought in the First World War and lost a lung in a German gas attack. Perhaps understandably, Coote was therefore not a fan of the deployment of chemical and nuclear weapons in West Germany. Ivanov had found Coote’s weak spot, and a friendship was formed. And Ivanov’s luck got even better when, shortly after, Coote invited him to a now infamous Garrick Club lunch along with David Floyd, the Daily Telegraph’s special correspondent on communist affairs.19 It was there that Ivanov met Stephen Ward, and the pathway to John Profumo and Bill Astor was laid.

According to Ivanov, he and Ward hit it off immediately. After the Garrick Club lunch, Ward took his new friend to his clinic on Devonshire Street to show him exactly what osteopathy was. Ivanov found Ward talkative and eloquent. He also says that Ward crowed that he treated nearly everyone of note, both British and foreigners alike,20 name-dropping the likes of Churchill, ex-Defence Minister Peter Thorneycroft, Eisenhower, Elizabeth Taylor and Frank Sinatra. Ivanov knew then he had hit a goldmine of contacts.

The talk then turned to another of Ward’s passions, gardening, and Ward explained to Ivanov that his cottage garden was on the Cliveden estate belonging to Bill Astor. Ward also added that Astor owed his health to him after the lord fell from his horse and was also responsible for Bill meeting his wife Bronwen, who was twenty-five years younger than the peer. Ivanov was delighted when Ward said the Russian was welcome to visit.

Rice-Davies says Ward and Ivanov went everywhere together, and that the charming Russian was welcome anywhere he went.21 She also adds that Ivanov always had cash and a high standard of living, spending his money freely. Later, Rice-Davies says, she learnt that Russian agents are groomed and trained to mix in society. She also says she asked Ward if his friend was a spy, and he told her that everybody that worked at the Russian Embassy was a spy. She even broached the subject with Ivanov himself. His explanation was more complex, and although he denied being an actual spy, he said he knew something about spying. He went on to explain that titbits of information seem meaningless on their own but once they are all fed back to an intelligence HQ, a picture can be assembled as if it were a jigsaw.22

Over the two years that Ivanov befriended Ward, the osteopath took him to nearly all the clubs in Pall Mall and St James’s, the Connaught Club in Marble Arch and small card clubs. The Russian found the Carlton to be the hideout of high-ranking Conservatives, the Travellers’ the backyard of medium-rank Foreign Office officials, and the Garrick and White’s the place to find high society. Ivanov says that these locations were at the core of the establishment’s power and held all the information and secrets he sought.23 He goes on to explain that his visits to these London locations, combined with bridge evenings at Ward’s Wimpole Mews apartment, weekends at Spring Cottage within Cliveden and lunching with high-ranking officials, allowed him to target his chosen six targets for espionage.