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.
Ward was often criticised for the way he lived his life. After the failure of his marriages, Ward never attempted to settle down again. Knightley and Kennedy’s book says, however, that Ward’s sexuality was hard to define, although nowadays it might be easier to simply accept that he was more fluid than traditional roles allowed. Some people have suggested he was gay, others that was a voyeur or interested in S&M. He seems to have enjoyed spending time with both prostitutes and other ‘waifs and strays’ as much as he did the aristocracy and celebrities. He certainly enjoyed hearing and gossiping about the sex lives of others. It was this lifestyle that led many to believe he was immoral in some way, and ‘wicked’ enough to be due some sort of punishment. Ward, however, didn’t think the way he lived was sinful, merely unconventional, saying that he wasn’t interested in standards that prevented people from being kind.32
In his mind, if not that of others, Ward went from helping the world avert disaster during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 to being framed for pimping in July 1963. What a devastating blow to a man who wanted to be everyone’s friend.
Chapter 5
Mandy Rice-Davies – The Sidekick Who Found Success
‘Most people go through life proving what they are. I go through life proving what I am not,’ said Mandy Rice-Davies in her 1980 autobiography Mandy.1 She was, perhaps, the most successful at rebuilding her life after the Profumo Affair wrecked many others, moving to Israel and enjoying success as an actress and singer, and running nightclubs and restaurants there.
Born Marilyn Rice-Davies in October 1944, the well-known partner in crime of Christine Keeler maintains that she always felt she was living in the wrong place as she grew up in Solihull, Birmingham, which she found dull.2 She lusted after adventure and freedom from the predictability of life in her three-up, two-down semi-detached home in suburbia. In contrast to Keeler, Rice-Davies went to a decent secondary modern school and was the daughter of supportive and settled parents. Her father had gone from boarding school into the police force and later worked for the Dunlop tyre company. Her mother had had a brief stage career and had left her birthplace of Wales to live in the Midlands. Both parents had been married previously, and Rice-Davies lived with her mother and father along with her half-sister Margaret from her mother’s previous marriage, who was sixteen years her senior, and later, her younger brother David. Her father was called up to the Eighth Army, seeing Rice-Davies just once before being posted overseas and returning when his daughter was a toddler.
Rice-Davies found school burdensome but enjoyed games and art and came top in English composition. But her real passion as a young girl was horses and, because of that, hard work. She did everything from cleaning windows to peeling boiled beetroot and paper rounds to earn the money she needed to pay for the keep of her RSPCA-rescued bay pit pony Laddie. Three miles away from her home was a riding stables where Rice-Davies mucked out and exercised the horses over weekends and holidays in return for stabling Laddie.
It was during her time at the local snooty pony club, dressed in a collection of second-hand clothes, that Rice-Davies says she got her first taste of an audience when, during an obstacle event, her pony misbehaved. She played to the crowd and loved it.
With Laddie moved closer to home, Rice-Davies started a Saturday job at fashion store McConvill’s, where she helped dress windows. From there, she moved to Marshall & Snelgove, a department store that was as close to Harrods as anything Birmingham had to offer, starting in the china section. It was here she got her first taste of modelling when the department store held a fashion show to coincide with a movie release. Rice-Davies was picked to walk the catwalk in a gown and fur coat, having her picture taken with the stars of the film too. Then, being spotted on the street, she appeared at the 1960 Motor Show in Earl’s Court, London as ‘Miss Austin’, which was a life-changing opportunity.3
Rice-Davies earned £80 for her week modelling at the Motor Show and made up her mind to return to London. Her parents were horrified, but since she was 16 and legally no one could stop her, she sold her sewing machine to raise some extra money and handed in her notice at the department store. One Monday morning, she waited for her parents to leave for work and her brother for school, and then packed her bags and boarded a train to London, saying goodbye only to Laddie.
When Rice-Davies arrived at Paddington, she bought a copy of the Evening Standard. Turning to the situations vacant column, she saw an ad for dancers at Murray’s. Passing the audition, she told Percy Murray she was 18 and was sent to the Strand Palace Hotel until she found accommodation of her own. She was to perform two shows a night and be paid £25 a week. She found the club respectable and run like a stern private school with its list of rules, including the forbidding of romance between clients and staff, to ensure the upper crust clientele were always happy to come back.4
Several weeks after starting work, Rice-Davies happened upon a co-worker who she thought was incredibly beautiful and reminded her of Nefertiti.5 It was Christine Keeler, and while the two girls didn’t get on immediately, they became friends, embarking on fun nights out and romances. While Rice-Davies says Keeler lacked organisation skills and failed to manage any money that came her way, and Keeler saw herself as the older, wiser of the two, Knightley and Kennedy say each girl gave the other something they lacked, and for both girls, the friendship offered comfort and safety.6
Rice-Davies said she recognised in Keeler someone who, like her, enjoyed living for the moment,7 and found her friend introverted, but easy to be around.8 She says Keeler fell in love frequently, had a healthy sex drive but had no interest in money. Rice-Davies also discovered that men were madly attracted to Keeler, and, since she was so disorganised, many hoped to sort out her chaotic lifestyle. Rice-Davies says although she enjoyed Keeler’s company, she knew that she couldn’t rely on her.9 The girls moved into a two-bedroomed flat together in Comeragh Road in Fulham and threw a housewarming party. Keeler oversaw the guest list, which included plump, middle-aged property speculator Peter Rachman and Stephen Ward. The flat would become the regular haunt of Ward, Astor and Tim Vigors, a former pilot.
This is how Rice-Davies met Ward, whom she slept with the first time she stayed at Spring Cottage as his guest, but never again, and then later through Ward, Astor. It was at this event that Rice-Davies also met the man who would go on to ‘keep her’ and eventually land her in prison.
Rice-Davies found she got on well with the notorious Rachman, who she describes as a self-made Jewish immigrant, and was particularly taken by his eyes.10 She noticed that he was immaculately groomed, wearing a silk shirt, cashmere suit and crocodile shoes. Later, Rice-Davies would become Rachman’s mistress; she knew that it was important to her boyfriend to be seen with an attractive woman by his side. Rachman eventually set Rice-Davies up in the flat in Bryanston Mews, which forced her to move away from Keeler, whom he had once dated and since their split didn’t like. Rachman gave Rice-Davies £80 a week to live on and bought his new mistress a white 3.2 Jaguar, giving her the keys and what she thought was a legitimate licence, despite having never applied for one or having taken a test. He also bought Rice-Davies a horse and encouraged her studies and modelling. Rachman moved his own possessions into the flat and saw Rice-Davies every day for lunch.
Keeler was unconcerned at losing her flatmate at this point, as she was spending her time with Manu, a rich Iranian student, in his Victoria rooms. Manu treated Keeler badly, causing her to later head back to Ward for accommodation.
Determined to pursue her modelling career, while at Murray’s, Rice-Davies had signed up with agent, Pat Glover, and was now rebranded as ‘Mandy’, appearing in a well-paid Pepsodent toothpaste commercial. She says she also worked hard at fitting into society, putting her skills in charming older generations to the test, and learning fast.
Keeler and Rice-Davies also hoped to find success in France, heading off to Paris, despite the admin nightmare of first obtaining a passport and realising that at the time you could only take £20 cash out of the country and that traveller’s cheques must be ordered in advance. The two women ended up stealing a hired car from two gullible young Americans, using it to drive, without a map, to what they hoped was the South of France. Of course, the car broke down before they reached their desired destination of Cannes, and they ended up relying on lifts from members of the opposite sex. One obliging suitor even gave Rice-Davies some chips for the casino.
Despite working hard, Rice-Davies recalls that she and Keeler were always hard up, a fact she puts down to the long wait for modelling cheques, which were often slow to arrive.11 This is how, she says, Bill Astor came to lend her £200 when the next quarter’s rent was due.
Once she became his mistress, Rachman made it clear to Rice-Davies he didn’t want her seeing Keeler, but the girls remained friends and met up when they could. On one such visit to London Zoo, Keeler told Rice-Davies she was having an affair with Profumo, although her friend didn’t know who he was or that he was the minister for war. However, Rice-Davies had her own dramas to contend with, quarrelling with Rachman, ‘faking’ a suicide and falling pregnant, then reluctantly having an abortion since Rachman refused to believe the child was his. But when Rachman fell ill just before Christmas 1961, Rice-Davies found herself nursing him, and realised she was in love.
Rachman and Rice-Davies’s eighteen-month relationship continued to be tumultuous. Towards the end of their affair, Rice-Davies says she found Rachman depressing to live with because he was extremely bad tempered due to constant dieting. On one occasion, having been abandoned for business on a holiday in Bournemouth, Rice-Davies invited Keeler down to the coast to keep her company instead. Rice-Davies decided to split up with Rachman and planned to stay down in Bournemouth. It didn’t last, but by November 1961, Rice-Davies and Keeler teamed up again to run off and live in Paris, and in early 1962, the two women even headed off to the States to work, which also ended in relative disaster.
Perhaps Keeler and Rice-Davies’s ultimate downfall, however, happened when Rice-Davies wasn’t even present, when Profumo first clapped eyes on a naked Keeler larking around at the Cliveden pool on the first Saturday of July 1961. Rice-Davies says she heard all about the weekend’s antics from Ward, and that since Profumo had made it obvious to Keeler that he fancied her, it wasn’t surprising that their affair started when Profumo telephoned Keeler immediately after the weekend. Rice-Davies says Profumo took Keeler out for dinner, country drives and to his house when his wife was away, but that he didn’t give her money or expensive presents, preferring instead to send notes and keep in constant contact by phone. Rice-Davies says the easily impressed Keeler was very fond of Profumo, who was not just rich and good-looking but important too.
As Keeler’s confidant, Rice-Davies also says that Ivanov did ask Keeler to find out from Profumo the date for delivery of nuclear warheads to West Germany but that Keeler was clear she wouldn’t betray her country. She also says that Ivanov never attempted to sleep with Keeler after the first time, and that her friend continued to come and go in the lives of both her and Ward and that during one of these absences, Keeler became entangled with Johnny Edgecombe. Edgecombe’s nickname, Kennedy and Knightley remind us, was ‘Johnny Shit’ because he sold marijuana.12 He certainly lived up to that moniker for Keeler.
Rice-Davies finally left Rachman in October 1962, moving in with Ward for what she expected to be under a fortnight. She had plenty of company in Keeler and Ivanov, and carried on socialising, eventually heading over to Paris with an American she had met and clicked with. But by the time Rice-Davies returned from her trip, Rachman had died in hospital after suffering a heart attack, and she’d been unable to say goodbye. She had further bad news, learning that her beloved pony Laddie had died in a car accident on the same day as Rachman had passed.
Rachman’s death and her absence at the time pushed Rice-Davies into depression and she took an overdose of thirty sleeping pills.13 It was Keeler, who had dropped by spontaneously with Paula Hamilton-Marshall, who saved Rice-Davies’s life, calling an ambulance when she saw her friend’s face was turning black.
After recovering in hospital, Rice-Davies returned to Ward’s flat. Her parents were invited to stay too and she agreed to pay £6 a week rent, and a half share towards food, electricity and the telephone. Later this arrangement would be used against Ward as evidence of his alleged ‘pimping’. Rice-Davies also says that around this time, Ward suggested a marriage of convenience to her. Perhaps he saw a fellow lonely soul and thought they could team up together? Or perhaps Ward wanted to ensure Rice-Davies couldn’t testify against him at some point in the future?
Instead, Rice-Davies and Keeler found a flat together again, this time in Great Cumberland Place, with Keeler promising she would cut her ties to the black community. It was at the Great Cumberland Place that Bill Astor visited one day, after Rice-Davies had been drinking. On this occasion, they ended up having sex,14 although it was never talked about or to happen again. Rice-Davies did tell Keeler about the incident, however, which she later regretted.
Rice-Davies had met Lucky Gordon when he had come to Ward’s flat looking for Keeler but found only her instead. He had dropped into Rice-Davies’s hands the stitches he’d had taken out of his face after Edgecombe had assaulted him and asked her to give them to Keeler with his regards. Rice-Davies was also to meet Edgecombe when he arrived at Wimpole Mews also looking for Keeler and ended up shooting first at the window and then at the front door. With the press and the police, who clearly already knew her name, now involved, Rice-Davies says she knew that it was the point of no return.15
Looking for an escape route, however, Rice-Davies and Keeler hoped to leave the country. Of course, they needed money to do so, and decided to ask Profumo, letting him know that the Mirror had offered her money to sell her story. But Rice-Davies thought Keeler had mismanaged the whole thing as Profumo’s lawyers advised against handing over any cash to the girls. With no one else willing to help, the women instead moved out of their flat to Park West. However, when Rice-Davies came home one evening to find Keeler in semi-darkness with West Indian friends, she told her to leave. Rice-Davies says it was then that Keeler took the money the Mirror was offering and left the country.16
One of the main pieces of evidence against Ward was Rice-Davies’s relationship with Emil Savundra, who was referred to in court as ‘the Indian doctor’. Rice-Davies met the Sri Lankan through his friendship with Ward. Savundra was revealed later to be a con man who had committed bribery and fraud on an international scale. The collapse of his Fire, Auto and Marine Insurance Company left about 400,000 motorists in the United Kingdom without cover. At the time, however, Rice-Davies found him kind and entertaining when she initially lunched with him and Ward and agreed with Ward to let Savundra to pay her rent so that he could use her room when she wasn’t there to entertain other women. After agreeing to this, Savundra then began to romance Rice-Davies with flowers and picnics and the two dated. Savundra also offered to pay for Rice-Davies’s acting lessons, and so left £25 in Ward’s flat for her. The prosecuting counsel would of course go on to claim this was Ward arranging a money-for-sex deal between Rice-Davies and Savundra, and that Rice-Davies would then pay some of the £25 she received to Ward.
