Of the targets Ivanov planned to obtain information from, Ward was his pass to the majority of them. At the top of this list sat Secretary of State for War John Profumo and his wife Valerie Hobson, followed by the Astors. After that came Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones and billionaire Paul Getty, all also connected to Ward. The final two targets were Sir Colin Coote and fellow press connection Paul Ritchey. Ivanov also had one more person on his list that he refers to as ‘Captain Souls’, who he says he recruited to work for Soviet intelligence. Ivanov also says that all of his attempts at espionage with these targets succeeded, except in the case of Paul Getty.

But it wasn’t a one-sided relationship. Ivanov also says Ward also gained valuable contacts via their friendship, particularly in his artistic career. While it was unusual for Soviet ministers to meet journalists unless at official press conferences, Ivanov was able to get Ward portraiture access to Minister for Culture Yekaterina Furtseva when she visited London. Ward was able to sketch the minister, which, with a short write-up, was then included in the Daily Telegraph. Furtseva was pleased with the flattering picture, and suggested Ward come to Russia and be introduced to premier Nikita Sergeyevich. It was an unparalleled opportunity.

With such a relationship established, it’s likely Ward trusted Ivanov completely. This could explain Ivanov’s account of Ward taking him to the home of Winston Churchill on the way to Cliveden one Sunday. Ward was heading to Churchill’s to treat his back and Ivanov was without his car that day so tagged along. Ivanov says he was left in the living room while Ward saw his octogenarian patient. During this time, Ivanov took the opportunity to look at papers left in the room. The papers, Ivanov says, included a letter about the new NATO strategy of ‘forward-based defence’, with West Germany assigned the role of a buffer zone, armed with nuclear weapons. Ivanov memorised what he could before the other men joined him. If true, Ivanov was indeed fortunate as a Russian agent to be left alone in a room containing such sensitive documents.

Ivanov says he bided his time at Cliveden, knowing that eventually he would meet Lord Astor. In preparation, he read up on the Astor family and listened carefully when Ward returned from treating Bill in the main house, full of information about who was visiting there. In time, Ivanov was invited to dine with the Astors, of course, and over dinner conversation made a friend of Lord Astor after which, Ivanov says, he had an open invitation to visit.24 The Russian further improved his chances of socialising with the lord and his Cliveden guests by learning and perfecting his bridge game. Ivanov also says he even offered to redesign Ward’s garden at Spring Cottage as a pretext for spending even more time there.25

Once he was an accepted guest at Cliveden, Ivanov says he used the opportunity to understand the layout of the house and gain access to rooms such as Astor’s study and library. He used a miniature Minox camera hidden under his tie to copy documents and correspondence. If he stole paperwork, he slipped it into an inside pocket his wife had sewn into his suit for this purpose. In this way, Ivanov claims he had access to such items as a letter to Astor that mentioned the delivery of the US Skybolt missiles to Britain, a project that was later dropped. Ivanov sent his findings direct to Moscow and considered his time playing bridge at Cliveden as a win/win situation, because even if he lost at cards, the information he mined while playing was far more important than any monetary gain he might make.26

Horne also says that Ivanov wanted to rent a cottage in the Cliveden estate just as Ward did.27

However, for all his planning, Ivanov’s attempts at using his relationship with the Astors and their powerful social circle were thwarted. Ivanov admitted that the fallout from the Profumo Affair meant that he and Ward were no longer welcome at Cliveden.28 All the access he had worked so hard to gain was now denied him.

Ivanov describes Christine Keeler, who he first met at Ward’s flat in the spring of 1961, in flattering terms, calling her ‘attractive’.29 Although he struggled to understand why Ward helped Keeler and Rice-Davies to meet influential people, he says that Keeler immediately caught his eye and possessed some kind of magic. He admits he left Cliveden with Keeler, after an evening in which he failed to get any useful information out of the high-ranking guests assembled there. He also says that Ward specifically asked him to take Keeler back to London with him as he left because Profumo was clearly very taken with her and couldn’t help but alert his wife to his wandering eye with his behaviour. He goes on to claim that Keeler seduced him and that he found her irresistible, but also felt that by sleeping with her, he had gained an ally. He also adds that he slept with her on a further occasion, by which time her attention had moved on to someone new. He doesn’t specify who this was, however.

However, he was well aware that the fact Keeler had been both his and Profumo’s lover was a valuable resource, making blackmail for information a possibility. He later learned that Moscow Centre was happy to sanction this form of espionage too, but that the plan failed because after the shooting at Ward’s flat, any GRU operation was foiled.30

MI5 files held at the National Archives show that when Ivanov returned to the Soviet Union in March 1962, staying until June, the British security services believed he may have well been receiving further instructions as to how to proceed in his work. By this time, the files suggest, that he would have known about Profumo’s relationship with Keeler and could perhaps have been briefed on how to best exploit it.31

Ivanov used the occasion of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s visit to the embassy’s party as an opportunity to further get to know the Profumos, inviting the couple along to the event. While Jack kept Ivanov at a distance, the Russian says he found it much easier to chat to Valerie Hobson.

Unable to get the information he wanted out of Profumo by casual chit-chat, Ivanov hoped to use Profumo’s affair with Keeler to his advantage instead. While he had played along with Profumo’s cheating in the infamous Cliveden swimming pool games, when Keeler was perched on his shoulders, Ivanov thought Profumo underestimated him, not realising he was playing a longer game. Ivanov says Profumo was mistaken too when he thought nobody other than Ward knew about his affair with Keeler and when he assumed Keeler would keep quiet about their liaison.

Throughout his time in England, Ivanov says British Intelligence were well aware of his real mission to the country and followed him everywhere. He says that every day in the early 1960s he had to deal with the surveillance32 and that MI5 were shadowing him more and more by the Spring of 1961.33 At that point, Soviet diplomats, journalists and other officials living in London could travel no further than 35 miles from the capital unless special permission was obtained from the Foreign Office. The trip itinerary and the hotel reservation confirmations all had to be declared. He also believes MI5 tapped his telephone but admits that the Russians also listened in to British calls.34 Everyone was playing by the same rules, it seems.

Once the Profumo scandal hit the headlines, however, it was game over for Ivanov, as he explains that he was recalled in January 1963 once the incident in Wimpole Mews brought everything out into the open.35

Ivanov left England when it was suffering from fog, heavy snow and frosts, the like of which hadn’t been seen for 150 years. He says he said goodbye to his friend Ward, and acquaintances such as Coote and Lord Astor, giving his mother’s sickness as the excuse for his recall. Knowing his phone was tapped, Ivanov says he booked a flight on 29 January, and then instead left by train and ferry via Chatham.

Lord Denning reported that Ivanov saw Ward to bid him farewell on 18 January, warning him the story might break soon. But Ward’s friends, Noel Howard-Jones and John Zeiger, say the osteopath last saw the Russian at Christmas and was very hurt to that Ivanov didn’t even call to say goodbye in person. Mandy Rice-Davies also says Ward was hurt by Ivanov’s silent departure.36

Later Ivanov learnt that it was Kim Philby who had told the KGB about the impending fallout from the Profumo scandal and saved him from becoming ensnared.37

What happened to Ivanov after he left the UK for Moscow was the subject of some rumour. When asked about it at a dinner, one Russian Embassy staff member told an inquirer that nobody in the Embassy had liked Ivanov because of the arrogance his position afforded him, which was taken to mean since he was a well-connected GRU operative. This Russian Assistant Naval Attaché also said that contrary to reports, Ivanov didn’t get a medal for his work in London, and there was no truth to the rumour that he was in prison.38

Ivanov died in January 1994, but the book he left behind has not been without controversy. In 2015, research from Cambridge scholar Professor Jonathan Haslam indicated that there was no need for Ivanov to ask Keeler to find out anything from Profumo because he was able to walk into Profumo’s study and photograph top-secret documents. Haslam claims that when he studied the Russian version of the Ivanov memoir, it reveals that Valerie Hobson left the Russian unattended in the study, while Profumo had sensitive documents visible there without following any security protocols. Haslam says that the passages in the book were removed for the UK market because of the threat of libel being brought against the book’s UK publishers, as Valerie Profumo was known to be extremely sensitive about the contents of Ivanov’s memoirs.39

Interestingly, Ivanov’s memoir does not mention any offers of recruitment he received from the British intelligence services, despite MI5 records showing that an agent codenamed Cat Burglar had been given this mission. The agent reportedly made friends with Ivanov after approaching him at Bayswater’s Columbia Club. Cat Burglar used the threat of Russia recalling him over his womanising and drinking in an attempt to ‘turn’ him.40

Always perplexed by his sudden disappearance, Mandy Rice-Davies claims that she was later told by an ex-CIA agent that the CIA took Ivanov and that he was an involuntary defector.41 Although I’m sure that Rice-Davies was used to hearing a lot of fanciful stories from men trying to impress or intrigue her.

Chapter 4

Stephen Ward – The Link Between Them All

Held in Mortlake Cemetery, the funeral of Stephen Ward was attended by just six mourners. It was August 1963 and despite Ward’s former extensive circle of friends, the defining feature was a wreath of 100 white carnations sent by controversial theatre critic and writer Kenneth Tynan. The accompanying note read: ‘To Stephen Ward, Victim of Hypocrisy’.1 And the reason for so few mourners? By his death, Ward was a social pariah, convicted as a pimp, suspected of being a traitor. But many say he was neither of these things and was in fact the fall guy in a situation that blew up in a way no one imagined it would at a time when reputation was everything.

Who was Stephen Ward, and how and why did he meet such a sad end?

Born at Lemsford Vicarage in Hertfordshire on 19 October 1912, Stephen Ward was the second son of vicar Arthur Evelyn Ward, and Eileen Esmée Vigors, the daughter of an Anglo-Irish landowner originally from County Carlow. While his father was bookish, his mother was lively and indulgent of her children. From his father, Ward inherited the belief that everyone was equal, whatever their background or origin;2 it seems his love of people and socialising more likely came from his mother, though. The family moved to Twickenham in 1920 and then to Torquay in Devon. As well as his older brother John, and younger brother Raymond, Ward had twin sisters Bridget and Patty.

Ward was sent to Canford boarding school in Dorset, but afterwards eschewed the idea of university and moved instead to London and then Hamburg, working in a variety of roles. He also worked in Paris alongside studying at the Sorbonne, with his mother sending him an allowance in secret. While in France’s capital, he earnt money taking tourists looking for the seedier side of Paris on trips to Pigalle and Bois de Boulogne. By 1934, however, his mother had convinced him to study at a long-established training school in Kirskville, Missouri, where he qualified as an osteopath. This was funded by Eileen’s brother Edward, who worked in the House of Lords, and an acquaintance of his, Jocelyn Proby. Ward’s father had long suffered with a hunchback, which had given Ward an insight into spinal problems.3 While he was in America, he took the opportunity to visit Chicago, and in particular the brothels there. He wanted to see how it measured up to the Sphinx in Paris.

Ward reportedly loved both the US and its people, finding Americans warm-hearted, open and dynamic. He also admired the kindness and hospitality he witnessed in America, and by comparison the way British behaved made Ward feel ashamed.4

According to Keeler, Ward was also an avid readers of spy novels.5

In 1940, Ward returned to England using the prefix ‘doctor’, despite his qualifications only allowing him to be a practising physician in America, and set up as an osteopath in Torquay. When war broke out, he had volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corp (RAMC), but since it did not initially recognise his qualifications, he instead joined the Royal Armoured Corps in 1939 as a private when he was called up. Once in the RAMC, the commanding officer there noticed his abilities and was happy for him to use them. Unfortunately, he was later reprimanded when an official medical officer complained about him and his work. Outraged at this, he arranged for his MP to ask questions in the Commons about the army’s attitude to osteopathy and petitioned George VI and the Prime Minister. The army court-marshalled and reprimanded him again and in 1944 he was posted to India. It was here, while in Poona, that he treated Gandhi for a neck problem, which he later said was the most important encounter of his life.6

After the war, Ward worked for the Osteopathic Association in Dorset Square, London and was paid £8 a week. After stepping in as a locum for a Park Lane colleague, he began to amass a portfolio of clients, setting up privately in Cavendish Square. His first patient of note was the US Ambassador Averell Harriman, and by the end of his career his patient list included everyone from Winston Churchill to Rab Butler, Paul Getty, King Peter of Yugoslavia, the Maharajah of Baroda, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, Sir Colin Coote and Lord Rothermere. Thus, his contact book stretched across the worlds of political figures, the silver screen, the press and those within the aristocracy and establishment. Not surprisingly, his work and social life began to overlap.

One of his clients was Lord William Astor, who in 1949 injured his back in a hunting fall on the Whaddon Chase. After seeing Ward for this complaint and after a bout of the inflammatory condition neuritis, the two became friends, with Ward regularly treating Astor after a weekend hunting session. Eventually this led to Astor renting Ward a cottage in the grounds of his ancestral home for a nominal rent and inviting him along to the gatherings often held at the big house. Ward also offered his skilled hands to any other Cliveden guests that were feeling achy or unwell. The Astor dinners and parties were of course packed with well-connected individuals. Ward fitted right in, or at least very much wanted to fit in. But Davenport-Hines also says Ward was prone to showing off, hated being alone and desperately needed the approval of others.7 If this is true, being and being seen at Cliveden would have pleased Ward immeasurably. Ward also loved to name drop.

Ward’s first love was Eunice Bailey, a red-headed model who walked for Christian Dior. But he hesitated over committing to her and she instead married someone else. This caused him to rush into marriage with model and beauty queen Patricia Baines when he was 36, and she was 22. After meeting at a friend’s bottle party, and falling for each other instantly, they wed in a 1949 ceremony held at Marylebone Register Office. But they fought over money on the honeymoon and after just six weeks, Baines reportedly left Ward’s flat. Within the year, it was officially over.8 Later he dated another model called Margaret Brown, who helped him tame Spring Cottage when he first took over it in 1956. Knightley and Kennedy believe Brown was the love of Ward’s life, but that Brown accepted a Hollywood contract when she realised Ward couldn’t commit to their future.9

Thereafter, Ward preferred less serious relationships with a variety of women, never settling down again. Instead, Davenport-Hines says Ward preferred to seek out girls in Oxford Street or coffee bars, picking up women he described as ‘alley cats’.10 By 1959, it was Keeler who shared his life and flat, albeit platonically. He liked too to be surrounded by an entourage of attractive younger women, and it’s clear that made him even more popular with those male contacts of his that enjoyed socialising with his ‘crowd’.

Ward did, however, have problems with one of his platonic female friends, or rather with her husband. John Lewis was a former Labour MP and successful businessman who owned Rubber Improvement. Following the general election in 1951, he lost his seat Bolton West to a Liberal candidate. Outwardly charming, he seemed ambitious and successful. But he fell foul of Harold Wilson when he tried to influence officials from the Board of Trade. He was also involved in a well-publicised road-rage incident against a police traffic officer during which he tried to use his position to avoid charges. Lewis was also a heavy drinker and a womaniser. His lack of self-control extended to his personal relationships, and after a drunken row, his wife Joy fled to stay with Ward. In retaliation, Lewis tried unsuccessfully to cite Ward in his divorce, reported him to the Inland Revenue, told the Daily Express Ward was part of a Mayfair call girl service and reported him to the police over the procuring of women for his wealthy patients.

John Lewis would go on to bear a grudge against Ward that was integral to the Profumo Affair. It was by pure chance that, along with an acquaintance, the journalist and a racing driver Paul Mann, Keeler later ended up at a Christmas party in the Regent’s Park area shortly after the Edgecombe shooting. Lewis was also in attendance as he lived close by. Keeler happened to tell the details of her complicated love life to both Mann and Lewis, mentioning Edgecombe and Ward, and also mentioning that she was involved with both Profumo and Ivanov. Lewis encouraged Keeler to repeat everything she had told him to a solicitor as soon as possible, suggesting that this would protect her interests, recommending one he knew.11 A week later, Lewis invited Keeler to his house and went through her story again, this time secretly taping it. In this conversation, Keeler said Ward had suggested asking about the nuclear warheads, as a joke.12

For Lewis, Keeler’s story was the ammunition he’d long waited for, he used the information to his advantage, telling the Labour MP George Wigg all he’d discovered. It is said that Lewis went on to celebrate with champagne after Ward’s death by suicide.

Another person that took against Ward was Bill Astor’s third wife Bronwen Pugh. Pugh refused any further treatments from Ward after her first experience of osteopathy with him. And, according to her biographer Peter Standford, Pugh told her new husband she didn’t like Ward after her first dinner with him. Ward was only to appear at Cliveden’s table two times after Pugh became lady of the house, and certainly in one case simply to make up the numbers at the last minute.13 On another occasion, Ward was foolish enough to argue his support for communism with notable dinner guest Deidre Grantley and with Bill Astor, both of whom held very personal experiences of the horrors the communist regime had inflicted upon Hungary. It seems in the contradictory nature of Ward that while he desperately wanted to be accepted by the upper echelons of English society, he also supported communism and social levelling, and seemed to seek out the awkwardness of conflict.

Ward was also a talented artist and specialised in portrait sketching. Those Ward drew over his career included John Betjeman, Peter Sellers, Sophia Loren, Terry-Thomas, the Duchess of Kent, Princess Marina, Princess Margaret and Prince Philip. After his successful exhibition at Leggatt Bros in July 1960, Ward supplied drawings to the Illustrated London News and to the Daily Telegraph, edited at the time by Sir Colin Coote. Having treated Coote for lumbago, the editor was yet another patient with impressive connections that Ward was then associated with. Coote, for example, was a university friend of Harold Macmillan and, according to Keeler,14 a regular golf chum of MI5’s Director General Roger Hollis.

With Coote at the helm, the Telegraph also sent Ward to draw those involved in the Adolf Eichmann trial in Israel in 1961. Ward also drew the Soviet Minister of Culture, Madame Furtseva, and it was Coote who is credited with suggesting Ward should travel to the Soviet Union to sketch leading politicians there for the paper too.

However, Ward told Coote that getting the visa that would allow him to sketch in the USSR was proving problematic. Since previously Coote had met Ivanov as he’d toured the Telegraph offices, he invited both these acquaintances to a lunch at the Garrick Club to allow Ward to better sort out any embassy paperwork.15 This would of course lead Ward to befriend Ivanov, so much so that the Soviet would call on Ward, and the two would head out to eat, drink or play bridge. If you believe this version of events, that is.

Keeler, however, maintains that the meeting arranged by Coote was a cover, and that Ivanov had arrived in London in March 1960 specifically to work for Ward.16 She also states that Hollis was part of Ward’s spy ring, saying that the two talked together at the Wimpole Mews house at least five times,17 with Ivanov regularly visiting for coffee in the evening. She also believed that Ward regularly passed information to Ivanov,18 which he would then feed back to Russia, and that she became involved too when Ward asked her to drop an envelope to the Russian Embassy. Later Ward’s espionage group would become worried that its cover could be blown by the recruitment to the British secret service of the Russian Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, who was a mole in the Kremlin and could pass the government details of those working for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU).19 And indeed, Penkovsky did later identify Ivanov as a spy.20

Despite his circle of impressive friends, Keeler paints a picture of Ward as someone who hated the establishment and thought the House of Lords was full of idiots. However, he could easily be described as a social climber and always moved in the highest of circles, including that of Prince Philip. Keeler believes this was a deliberate attempt to infiltrate and influence British society for his spy work.

Mandy Rice-Davies first met Ward at a party at a flat she shared with Keeler. Despite not warming to him initially, Rice-Davies says that as she got to know Ward better, she enjoyed his company more, finding him ‘charming, well-informed and well-educated’.21 Rice-Davies says that Ward was the perfect dinner guest and thus had an active social life, moving between his flat in Wimpole Mews, his consulting rooms in Harley Street and his local coffee bar in Marylebone Lane. His flat saw a steady flow of guests because, Rice-Davies explains, Ward found people interesting and always had time for them.22 Perhaps it’s not surprising to find he had many female friends, since Rice-Davies says that Ward was a patient listener, including to those with emotional problems, and also enjoyed trivial gossip and in-chat. One suspects this was an unusual trait to find in a man in that era, when women were often thought of as second-class citizens.

When discussing the book David Profumo was writing, John Profumo told his son that after the Sunday swimming races in which Keeler sat on his shoulders, he asked Keeler for her number. Keeler apparently referred the request to Ward.23 This might suggest anything from the fact Keeler was trying to ignore Profumo’s advances to the idea that Ward in some way (mentally, emotionally, even financially) controlled Keeler, and certainly influenced her decision making when it came to boyfriends and any liaison that might be entered into with the politician. It’s worth noting, however, that since they lived together, Ward’s number was in fact Keeler’s contact too. These were the days of the shared landline, and Ward paid the bill for this phone, as court evidence later showed.

David Profumo doesn’t accept Ward was at all involved in the intelligence world, even on the British side, as other evidence suggests, instead referring to him as a ‘fantasist’.24 Instead, Profumo thinks it’s highly unlikely that MI5 would have recruited Ward exactly because he enjoyed gossip and name-dropping and because he had political opinions that would not have matched their own.25

Robertson says that Ward believed he was acting as a peace broker during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when at Ivanov’s request he approached the Foreign Office to see if it would host a meeting between Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.26 This role was confirmed by Knightley and Kennedy in their 1987 book An Affair of State. Ivanov asked Ward to speak to Bill Astor, Sir Godfrey Nicolson and Permanent Under-Secretary Sir Harold Caccia to encourage a summit conference to be called by the British.

The Security Service files released in October 2022 conclude that by October 1962, Ward was ‘at least a willing dupe’ of Ivanov, helping him to obtain information from the Foreign Office. While Ivanov may have been sent to the UK with specific instructions, he may also have ‘capitalised on opportunities provided by Mr Ward as they developed’, and Ward may have become ‘an active collaborator without ever becoming a conscious agent of the Russian Intelligence Service’.27 The Security Service denies Ward was a spy. The official biographer of the organisation, Christopher Andrew, says that the history of the Profumo Affair has been twisted by claims that Ward was framed by the police and driven to suicide, and that Keeler was a ‘honey-trap’ set up to trick Ivanov into defection.28 He says the truth of the matter is that Ward was only of interest to the Service because of his friendship with Ivanov and dealing with him made it clear to the Service that Ward was both difficult and anti-establishment, and not someone it was worthwhile to recruit. The officer known to Ward as Keith Wood was in fact more interested in Ivanov’s drunkenness as described by Ward.

However, ‘Wood’ said he was dismayed to find out at a meeting with Ward on 28 May 1962 that the Foreign Office (FO), with the personal approval of Lord Home, the Foreign Secretary, and Sir Harold Caccia, had in fact used the osteopath to pass official reports to Ivanov during the Berlin Crisis. The Security Service says it warned the Foreign Office that Ward was ‘naïve’ and ‘indiscreet’, but the FO continued anyway.29 Andrew says when Ward was used again, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was at the behest of the Russians. But while Ward, who Andrew describes as mistakenly showing off about his role as an important intermediary between the two sides, the Service had not assigned him any such job. Andrew says that Ward was simply making more than was necessary out of the fact that he passed a message from Ivanov to the FO’s Caccia, expressing the Soviet hope that the UK could have a conciliatory role between the two sides, on 24 October. Three days later, Ward visited Lord Arran to encourage him to pass on the Russian request that the British call a summit. Arran passed that message on to the FO and Number 10.30 However, with all these missives, it’s not hard for an outsider to see exactly why Ward thought he was involved.

So, if he wasn’t a Russian spy, or even working, however briefly, for the UK government in some way, was Ward a pimp? Was he running Keeler from his flat and connecting her to VIPs for money and influence? Many people still believe it’s highly unlikely that Ward was able to ‘live off’ any earnings Keeler made simply from prostitution. Keeler herself says that Ward received five guineas for each osteopathy session, made money from his sketches and had family wealth too.31 However, once the Profumo Affair had come to light, and particularly Ward’s role in introducing Keeler to both the minister and Ivanov, facts such as how much money might or might not have passed between Ward and his flatmates was not enough to prevent him being arrested on Saturday, 8 June for charges brought under the Sexual Offences Act.