PLEASE NOTE: I DID NOT WRITE ANY OF THE PIECES IN THIS THREAD, BUT AM POSTING THEM HERE AT THE REQUEST OF OUR MODERATORS.

Two worlds collided in the summer of 1961, when a British Cabinet minister and a young nightclub showgirl met by chance on an aristocrat’s Buckinghamshire estate. Others present that fateful weekend included a Russian diplomat, known to be a spy, and a successful osteopath and artist, whose easy charm had secured him a place in London’s high – and low – life. As they all enjoyed a hot Sunday around the estate swimming pool, no one could have known that this pleasant social interlude was sowing the seeds of a national sex-and-security drama – and personal disaster.

A rare weekend away from affairs of state found John Profumo – War Minister in a Conservative government that had held power for ten years – and his actress wife, Valerie Hobson, at Cliveden House, Buckinghamshire. Just one hour’s drive from London, Cliveden was the grand family seat of the Astors, one of Britain’s richest non-royal dynasties. Profumo’s close friend Lord (Bill) Astor, often held extravagant parties there, attended by rich and influential members of government and high society. On this particular July night, around thirty distinguished guests had gathered for dinner.

Nineteen-year-old showgirl and model, Christine Keeler, was one of the guests that weekend at a smaller, less formal party on the Cliveden estate. It was held at a Tyrolean-style riverside cottage which Lord Astor rented to his osteopath, Stephen Ward, for a peppercorn rent of £1.00 per annum. The forty-seven-year-old Ward and Christine lived together in London, as flatmates rather than lovers, and she was a regular visitor to his Cliveden retreat.

That Saturday evening – 8 July 1961 – was uncomfortably hot. Ward had a standing invitation from Lord Astor to use the Cliveden swimming pool, and his party was glad of the opportunity to cool down there.

Christine chose an ill-fitting swimsuit from several provided by Lord Astor for his guests, and Ward suggested that she take it off. Moments later she was naked and diving onto the pool, much to the delight of the other guests.

It was getting late when a group of Astor’s guests, hearing the sounds of splashing and laughter from the pool, decided to take a look. The host and Profumo walked ahead of the others. They were confronted by a naked, dripping and highly embarrassed Christine, vainly grabbing a towel to cover herself. Ward, ever the practical joker, had flung her swimming costume into some nearby bushes. It was a bizarre scene. Astor made the introductions, Mrs. Profumo offered Christine a swimsuit, and Ward and his companions were invited up to the house.

Once at the house, Profumo took Christine on a guided tour. He was, she recalled, ‘a type I find it hard to say no to; I didn’t mind being alone with him. There were some suits of armour in one room, and, on a dare, I let my companion dress me up in one. He paraded me in front of the others. Lord Astor invited us to return the next day for an afternoon swim.’

Sunday dawned even hotter than the previous day. Christine, who had returned to London overnight, made the journey back to Cliveden. She was accompanied by two girlfriends and Ward’s friend Ivanov – Assistant Naval Attaché at the Russian Embassy. They made directly for the pool.

Profumo and Ivanov vied for Christine’s attention during boisterous water games. [Not ‘golden showers’] Christine says, ‘I liked Ivanov. He was a man. He was rugged, strong and agile. But somehow, when we decided to have a water piggy-back fight, it was Jack Profumo’s shoulders I climbed on.’

Ward’s recollections were to prove uncannily prophetic: ‘Ivanov and JP had a race down the pool, supposedly without using their legs. Profumo shot ahead – using his legs.’ Profumo then joked, ‘That’ll teach you to trust a minister of the Crown!’

What the Soviet diplomat made of all this, Ward could only speculate. ‘There it all was,’ he wrote, ‘his dreams come true. There was the Minister, the President of Pakistan, duchesses, peers and officials of oil companies. Well, it was difficult to explain that this was not the hatching of any dreadful plot concerning oil, the Far East and all points west. I could see the sort of report that was going back to the embassy.’

By the end of the weekend, Profumo had managed to get Christine’s telephone number from Ward – but it was with the Russian that she drove home that night.

Christine’s account of what happened next, in the living room of Ward’s flat, may be the fantasy of a young girl flattered by a powerful man’s attention: ‘Suddenly he was kissing me… I was as surprised as I was pleased.’

Ivanov, talking in 1990 from retirement at his home in Gorky, finally reveals that he did actually sleep with Christine, although his account is more of a routine execution of KGB orders. Ward heard Christine’s account the following morning, on the Monday after the Cliveden weekend, but later wrote in his memoirs, ‘She said she would like to have had intercourse with him. I have always believed myself that she never did.’ However, at the time, Ward’s response to Christine’s revelation was: ‘My goodness! What with Eugene on one hand and your new friend on the other, we could start a war!’ This particular joke was to backfire on Stephen Ward over the following two years.

Joke aside, Ward shrewdly realised that knowledge of a Profumo-Keeler-Ivanov triangle could be lethal in the hands of the wrong people. On the same Monday that Christine told him about her night with Ivanov, Ward arranged a meeting with Keith Wagstaff, an MI5 contact who had been monitoring Ward’s friendship with the Russian as a matter of course.

Ward had been introduced to Ivanov, over lunch at the Garrick club, by the Managing Editor of the ‘Daily Telegraph’, Colin Coote. Coote had long-standing connections with MI5. Ivanov spent the months after this lunch meeting sampling the delights of Ward’s decadent London, visiting his Wimpole Mews flat, and meeting his many girls, including Christine. Ward’s close friendship with Ivanov seemed to be based on a shared love of bridge and high living, and, being a social gadfly, he delighted in roaming through London with a real live Russian in tow.

On 8 June 1961, exactly one month before Profumo’s first encounter with Christine by the Cliveden pool, Ward was approached by MI5 official ‘Mr. Woods’ (who we now know to be Keith Wagstaff). Ward was asked by Woods to keep up his friendship with Eugene Ivanov and report back ‘if anything should happen that you feel we should know about’.

When Ward met Wagstaff on the Wednesday after that Cliveden weekend, he told the MI5 official that the War Minister, Christine and the Russian attaché had been present at the Sunday swimming party. Such a meeting was noteworthy enough, but, at one of his meetings with Christine at Ward’s flat, Ivanov had expressed an interest in a vital security issue – when the Americans were going to arm West Germany with atomic weapons. Christine claims that Ward said to her, ‘Why don’t you ask Jack?’

Meanwhile Profumo wasted no time in pursuing Christine. Their first date was a drive around London in the ministerial limousine. Although the young woman did not find Profumo handsome, his aura of power both impressed Christine and appealed to her.

Profumo began to visit Christine at Ward’s Wimpole Mews flat. He would usually take her for a drive until the coast was clear. She recalls, ‘Jack and I became lovers the third time he came around…We started laughing and talking as usual, and then there was one of those electric potent silences… without a word we were embracing and he was kissing me.’

Despite possible worry about his wife, Profumo once took Christine home, a grand Nash house in Regents Park. ‘It was late,’ said Christine. ‘The butler and the rest of the staff were in bed… We crept round the lovely rooms and then got into their bedroom.’ Christine said that the couple had sex on the Profumos’ bed. The Minister exuded power. ‘Sleeping with him was the way other people might feel about making love to a film-star.’

The couple also made love in his car, and, once, in Regents Park. His presents to her included a Flaminaire cigarette lighter and £20 ‘for her mother’ – a polite way of paying for her services. Christine later summed up the liaison as ‘a very well-mannered screw of convenience’.

However, on August 9, when the affair was barely a month old, Profumo was warned about his liaison by the government’s Cabinet Secretary, Sir Norman Brook. On the advice of Sir Roger Hollis, head of MI5, who had heard of the Profumo-Keeler-Ivanov triangle from Keith Wagstaff, he wanted to warn Profumo to be careful what he said when he met Ward. The osteopath was a sometimes indiscreet chatterbox, and might pass on snippets of information, dropped during casual conversation, to Ivanov.

MI5’s greater purpose, however, was that Profumo might be a lead-in to Ivanov, as part of a ‘honeytrap’ operation to compromise the Russian sexually, and thus encourage him to pass secrets or defect. Profumo turned down MI5’s request. Caught out in sexual folly, Profumo must have known that his glittering career and marriage were at risk – helping the MI5 scheme was just another unnecessary complication.

Within hours of seeing Brook, Profumo sat down to write what was to be his ‘goodbye’ letter to Christine. He spent the summer recess with his family. As far as he was concerned, the matter was resolved.

In March 1960, Captain Eugene Ivanov was posted to London’s Soviet Embassy as Assistant Naval Attaché. This dark, tall thirty-seven-year-old was more sophisticated than most Russian diplomats in those days. The British security service, MI5, quickly identified him as a Soviet intelligence officer using diplomatic cover.

Ivanov drank a good deal and, though married, was ‘something of a ladies man.’ MI5 thought him vulnerable to being ‘turned’ and determined on a plan of entrapment through sexual compromise. An introduction to Stephen Ward was the perfect start. Through Ward, probably an unwitting lure, [I don’t think he was!] Ivanov would meet desirable women. Ward was also open-minded on the USSR and Communism, often talking of dialogue between nations.

MI5 were very active during the early 1960s – the height of the Cold War between East and West. The superpowers were at loggerheads over control of Berlin, and Britain and the USA were concerned about the Soviet build-up of nuclear arms. In this climate all Soviet embassy appointments were automatically viewed with suspicion.

Much of Christine Keeler’s childhood was spent with her mother and stepfather in two converted railway carriages in the Berkshire village of Wraysbury. Life in the caravan allowed little privacy; although she was close to her mother, she felt threatened by her stepfather’s attentions.

In 1957, at the age of fifteen, Christine took a job as a model at a dress shop in Soho. One day, the shop’s sweeper, a Ghanaian student, invited her to his flat, where she lost her virginity to him. Says Christine: ‘I can’t say I was stimulated by the experience.’

At sixteen, Christine was dating Americans from military bases in the Wraysbury area. One of the men was Jim, a black sergeant from Laleham Air Force Base. Months after he had left for the States, Christine discovered she was pregnant. She tried to abort the baby herself, but the child was born prematurely on 17 April 1959. That summer Christine left Wraysbury, staying briefly in Slough with a friend before moving to London.

While waitressing at a restaurant in Baker Street, Christine met Maureen O’Connor, a girl who worked at Murray’s Cabaret Club in Soho. She introduced Christine to the owner, Percy Murray, who hired her almost immediately as a topless showgirl. As expected of showgirls, she was soon sitting with the customers between acts, encouraging them to buy more drinks.

One night a rich Arab customer came to Murray’s. He was accompanied by a starlet and a second man – Stephen Ward. Leaning over to Christine, Ward said, with great charm, ‘You were wonderful in the show.’ He asked her what she was doing later. He persuaded her to give him her telephone number.

The next day Ward called Christine three times. She rejected his advances, but he turned up at Wraysbury to charm her mother. On their second date, Ward asked Christine to move into his flat in Bayswater.

Stephen Ward had much to offer Christine. She was an attractive woman alone in a big city and he could give her security and an undemanding friendship. Unlike most other men, Ward did not pester Christine for sex. She recalled that they were soon living like brother and sister. Some time after meeting Christine, Ward decided that he wanted to move to a larger flat. He sought the help of Peter Rackman – later to be exposed as London’s most unscrupulous property racketeer.

In 1960, Mandy (born ‘Marilyn’) Rice-Davies was sixteen years old. Though she grew up in Solihull near Birmingham her parents were Welsh. At fifteen, but looking older, she began to model clothes at Marshall and Snelgrove, a Birmingham department store.

Before she turned sixteen, Mandy lost her virginity to a student. He was helping his parents run their shop during the summer holiday, and the event, she remembers, took place ‘in the room above the sweet shop next to the Odeon cinema.’

Some months later, Mandy was in London, posing as a model at the Earl’s Court launch of a new car called the Mini. The pay for the week was £80; that, plus receptions and glamorous launch parties, gave her a taste of the high life and she moved to London.

On her first day there Mandy was hired as a dancer at Murray’s Cabaret Club. Here she found many wealthy, often middle-aged, admirers. They included Walter Flack, millionaire partner of Charles Clore (who was to have sex with Christine Keeler for money) and Eric [Eric!], Earl of Dudley. The earl showered Mandy with flowers, sent her a case of pink champagne and took her for drives in his Jaguar. Another admirer was New York millionaire Robert Sherwood. Her advised Mandy to go back to Solihull, but caught up in London’s excitement and glamour, she chose to ignore him.

By the summer of 1962, the Profumo-Keeler-Ivanov story was beginning to seep out into society circles. July’s issue of ‘Queen’ magazine made a vague reference to the rumours in a gossip column snippet – ‘called in MI5 because every time the chauffeur driven ZIS drew up at her front door, out of the back door into a chauffeur driven Humber slipped…’

In early November an anonymous caller told George Wigg, a Labour MP who was known to dislike Profumo to ‘forget the Vassall case. You want to look at Profumo.’ Wigg took note. It was mid-December though, by the time Profumo’s secret life began to come out into the open.

Among Christine Keeler’s lovers were two West Indian rivals for her attention, Aloysius ‘Lucky’ Gordon and Johnny Edgecombe. Gordon was jealously infatuated with Christine. He had assaulted her in the street and had also, Christine alleges, held her hostage for two days. She dropped the charges she had brought for the latter incident in response to appeals from Gordon’s brother – he feared that Gordon would receive a long sentence because of his criminal record for violence.

When Christine at last rejected Gordon, she bought a revolver to protect herself from him. John Edgecombe was also enlisted by Christine to act as her minder. Edgecombe and Gordon met in a face-to-face confrontation at a Soho club. Edgecombe slit Gordon’s face with a knife, inflicting a wound needing seventeen stitches.

For the next few weeks Edgecombe went into hiding from the police, while Christine, in fear of her life, changed address to avoid Gordon. Edgecombe realised that he could not remain in hiding indefinitely and asked Christine to help him find a solicitor before surrendering himself to the police. But Christine, jealous of the fact that Edgecombe had taken another lover, made a decision that was to precipitate the exposure of the whole Profumo story. She told Edgecombe that she would not help him and that she planned to testify against him in court.

In the early afternoon of 14 December 1961, Edgecombe, wild with rage, showed up outside Ward’s Wimpole Mews flat. Christine, there visiting Mandy Rice-Davies, refused to let him in. Incensed, Edgecombe blasted the door with the revolver that had once belonged to Christine. Neighbours, hearing the startling commotion, raised the alarm, and Wimpole Mews was quickly swarming with police and journalists. Edgecombe, who managed to make off in a taxi, was later arrested at his Brentford flat. The press, excited by the action, had no idea of the story that was about to be unleashed.

The episode proved a catalyst. Christine’s story of sexual and political intrigue poured forth to interested parties. Michael Eddowes, a solicitor friend of Ward, who later played a prominent part in its exposure and was responsible for alerting the Americans to security aspects of the affair, was one such person. Christine also informed the former Labour MP, John Lewis, who, unknown to her, was an avowed enemy of Stephen Ward.

After hearing Christine’s amazing testimony, Lewis believed that he was finally in a position to ruin Ward. It so happened that he was a horse racing acquaintance of Profumo’s critic, Labour MP George Wigg.

In early January 1963, Lewis told Wigg the details of Christine’s story –including Ward’s alleged request that she should try to obtain information from Profumo regarding the delivery date of nuclear warheads to West Germany. In Wigg’s opinion this represented a security risk and he began to build up a dossier on Ivanov. Meanwhile, Lewis continued to feed the police with accusations that Ward was running a call-girl service. Once again, his accusations were entirely bogus, but this time they would be taken seriously.

Events now began to gather pace. The sixteenth of January 1963 was the date set for the Edgecombe committal hearing. Two days later Ward saw his friend Ivanov for what was to be the last time. On 22 January Christine told her story to the ‘Sunday Pictorial’. It included all the intimate details of the affair and the allegation that Profumo had left himself open to ‘the worst type of blackmail – the blackmail of a spy’. Ivanov left the UK one week later, a departure ‘much regretted’ by his friends and undertaken with ‘ the connivance of MI5’.

The ever-increasing pressure on Ward and Christine began to affect their relationship. On 26 January, they had a row which was to have bitter consequences, particularly for the osteopath. By coincidence, a Detective Sergeant Burrows had called to take Christine’s statement with regard to the Edgecombe hearing. Still angry, she blurted out her tale to the bemused policeman. Besides giving out details of her relationships with Profumo and Ivanov, she also claimed that Ward was a ‘procurer for gentlemen in high places’, as well as being ‘sexually perverted’.

When rumours of a forthcoming story in the ‘Sunday Pictorial’ reached Ward, his first thought was to warn his friends Lord Astor and Jack Profumo. Over the next few days, strenuous efforts were made to try and keep Christine’s revelations out of the papers. First, Profumo asked Sir Roger Hollis, head of MI5, to issue a ‘D-notice’ to stop publication, presumably on the grounds that publication of the story would have represented a threat to national security. Hollis, reportedly, had no desire to see his department tainted by a public scandal and decided to stay out of it.

There followed a series of complex negotiations between Christine and the legal representatives of Ward and Profumo. What actually happened remains obscure, but in essence, it was proposed that she drop her story and leave the country for a compensatory payment of £5000. The alternative explanation is that she was being lured into a trap, whereby she would have left herself open to a charge of extortion. Either way, the deal fizzled out.

As news of these happenings reached the government, Profumo was seen by the Prime Minister’s Principal Private Secretary, Timothy Bligh and Chief Whip, Martin Redmayne. Profumo lied that the affair had been no more than ‘a giggle in the evening’, and that sexual intercourse had not taken place. ‘I am a man of the world,’ said Redmayne, ‘and I know if you hear a lot of rumours that somebody is sleeping with a girl, there is generally something in it.’ However incredible Bligh and Redmayne must have found Profumo’s assertion, their sense of public school honour meant that they had no option but to take his word for it – as a trusted colleague and fellow gentleman.

Bligh also arranged a meeting with MI5 to ask why the government had not been informed earlier. He was given the brush-off. MI5 claimed they had no idea that Profumo had been sleeping with Christine. In fact, Stephen Ward, ever anxious to do the right thing for Britain, [?] had kept them closely informed on the matter right from the outset. He even managed to persuade an assistant editor of the ‘Sunday Pictorial’ that Christine Keeler’s story contained material inaccuracies and that its publication would be bound to attract a major libel suit.

But the rumours were spreading fast. An obscure newsletter, ‘Westminster Confidential’, printed a thinly veiled reference to the scandal in its March edition. The readership was composed mainly of MPs, so the affair soon became common knowledge on the backbenches. Interestingly, the information had been supplied by the right wing Tory MP, Henry Kerby, an ex-MI6 officer who was now used by MI5 as an informant in Parliament.

When, on 14 March, Johnny Edgecombe finally appeared in court, Christine Keeler was nowhere to be seen. A week earlier she had travelled to Spain with a couple of friends, Paul Mann and Kim Procter. In 1989, it was alleged that Mann had been paid £3000 by anonymous officials to ‘spirit Christine Keeler out of the country’. On his return, he was taken to Whitehall and advised to ‘forget the whole incident’. The main effect of Christine’s absence was to re-awaken press interest in her.

As for Edgecombe, he was found not guilty of the assault on Lucky Gordon but received a seven-year prison term on the lesser charge of possession of a firearm. He has always maintained that the conviction was racially motivated and served over five years of his sentence before being released.

For John Profumo, the disappearance of Christine Keeler spelt disaster. It provided a way, at last, for the press to link the Keeler-Edgecombe case with the name of John Profumo. The ‘Daily Express’ did it on 15 March 1963, by means of a clever trick on the newspaper’s front page. One column away from a picture of Christine, captioned ‘Vanished’ was a picture of Profumo next to the headline ‘WAR MINISTER SHOCK – Profumo offers his resignation for personal reasons and Premier asks him to stay on.’

The story was not accurate. Profumo had discussed his resignation weeks earlier – with the Chief Whip, not the Prime Minister – and had decided against it. Profumo was able to tell reporters now gathered outside his home, ‘There is no truth in this story at all – I have not seen the Prime Minister. I have been working on army estimates.’ The story remained front-page news from this moment on. It was fuelled by some curious burglaries.

The break-ins had started in early February, during Profumo’s efforts to suppress the truth. Two photographs, both taken at the Cliveden swimming pool, vanished from Ward’s London flat. One picture, showing Ward with three girls had been snapped by Profumo. The other showed him with two girls, one of them Christine. [The first photograph referred to can be seen on the CarlandMats Photeos Page].

Trevor Kempson, then a twenty-one-year-old freelance journalist, now admits that he was the culprit in the burglary. He tried to sell the pictures to the ‘Daily Mirror’.

By now, few in the world of politics believed the dam could hold. It was about now that Conservative MP William Shepherd wrote to the Prime Minister demanding action on the ‘immorality of the government’. Macmillan asked him to give his information to the Chief Whip, Martin Redmayne, and he did. Shepherd remembers the conversation. ‘As I was about to leave I said, “What are you going to do about Jack?” And he said, “If anyone says a word about Jack in public, we will sue for damages.”

What the mandarins of the Conservative Party wanted would soon be academic. Labour MP George Wigg had shown his dossier to his political boss, the future Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and Wilson cleared him to bring the matter into the open. Wigg now looked for a way to raise the Profumo case under the protection of parliamentary privilege, and fate offered an ideal opportunity.

Christine Keeler met Mandy Rice-Davies at Murray’s Cabaret Club in London. ‘It was dislike at first sight,’ Mandy recalls, and Christine felt the same. They functioned well together in company and seemed to complement each other – Mandy was shrewd and had a head for money, Christine did not and was generally disorganised.

They also worked well in the bedroom, taking part in threesome sex scenes with men. Christine says this became a speciality. She says neither were a bit bothered by group sex – it amused them and brought in money for clothes and entertainment.

A debate took place in the House of Commons on the evening of 21 March 1963, concerning two reporters who had gone to prison for refusing to reveal their sources during the enquiry into William Vassall. Vassall was the homosexual Admiralty clerk who had been jailed for eighteen years for spying for the Soviet Union. This lucky combination of issues – national security and press reporting – gave George Wigg the opportunity to speak on a related, but entirely different matter.

Just before midnight, Wigg addressed the Commons: ‘There is not an honourable member in the House, nor a journalist in the press gallery,’ he said, ‘who, in the past few days, has not heard rumour upon rumour involving a member of the Government Front Bench. The press has got as far as it could – it has shown itself willing to wound, but afraid to strike…That being the case, I rightly use the privilege of the House of Commons to ask the Home Secretary… to go to the dispatch box – he knows that the rumour to which I refer related to a Miss Christine Keeler, and Miss Davies, and a shooting by a West Indian – and on behalf of the Government, categorically deny the truth of these rumours…’

Pandemonium broke out behind the scenes. Chief Whip, Martin Redmayne, woke the Prime Minister up after 1 am to tell him that it was vital for Profumo to give a personal statement to the House before the newspapers ran Wigg’s speech on their front pages. Profumo’s telephone was off the hook, so an official car had to be sent to collect him. The Minister for War had taken a sleeping tablet and was still in a stupor as the car sped back through the night to Westminster.

Profumo found himself before five men who formed the backbone of the British Establishment. There were Sir John Hobson, the Attorney –General, and William Deedes, Minister without Portfolio. Both were old Harrovians, like Profumo. There too were Chief Whip Redmayne; Solicitor-General Sir Peter Rawlinson and the Leader of the House, Iain Macleod. The Home Secretary, the man responsible for police and security matters, was conspicuous by his absence.

Profumo reasserted his innocence. But there were those in the room that evening who thought it likely that he was lying. As a fellow Conservative was to say, Profumo ‘was not a man ever likely to tell the absolute truth in a tight corner.’ However, by 4.30 am, a statement had been concocted. Profumo went home to a house still besieged by reporters.

Shortly after 11.00 am, flanked by Harold Macmillan, Profumo rose to tell the historic lie that would not be forgiven:

‘My wife and I first met Miss Keeler at a house party in July 1961 at Cliveden. Among a number of people there was Dr. Stephen Ward, whom we already knew slightly, and a Mr. Ivanov, who was an Attaché at the Russian Embassy. Between July and December 1961 I met Miss Keeler on about half a dozen occasions at Dr. Ward’s flat when I called to see him and his friends. Miss Keeler and I were on friendly terms. There was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintance with Miss Keeler… I shall not hesitate to issue writs for libel and slander if scandalous allegations are made or repeated outside the House.’

Profumo left to the cheers of the Conservative faithful and the Prime Minister walked with him, his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. The same afternoon, Profumo found time to go to the races at Sandown Park with the Queen Mother. He allowed himself to be photographed with her. That night he went to a dance at Quaglino’s with his wife.

George Wigg left the Commons ‘with black rage in my heart because I knew what the facts were’. He would not rest until he had forced the Government to face the truth. In the background were other men, all dedicated to the exposure of Profumo, or Ward, or both. There was Ward’s enemy, John Lewis, solicitor Michael Eddowes, and the chiefs of MI5, scheming to mask their own involvement.

Wigg then appeared on television and spoke of a continuing security issue. One of the viewers was Stephen Ward. Stung by the implication that he had endangered national security, Ward saw Wigg the next day. He provided a briefing that Wigg recorded on paper. It was, Harold Wilson was to say later, ‘a nauseating document, taking the lid off a corner of the London underworld of vice… blackmail and counter-blackmail… together with references to Mr. Profumo and the Soviet Attaché…’

On 29 March, Michael Eddowes called Scotland Yard to say he had important information. He gave a Special Branch officer an aide-memoire, based on the information Christine had given him after the Edgecombe shooting, alleging that it was Ivanov – not Ward as all other accounts have it – who had asked Christine to pump Profumo for information about the delivery of nuclear warheads to Germany. The Special Branch man, according to Eddowes, said that the information would be put in front of the Prime Minister.

On the same day, the head of MI5, Roger Hollis, was called in by Home Secretary Henry Brooke. Although MI5 already knew about the Keeler affair and that Profumo had lied to the House of Commons, Hollis did not share his knowledge with the Home Secretary. To do so would have revealed MI5’s use of Ward in their scheme to entrap Eugene Ivanov. Instead, the head of MI5 threw Ward to the wolves. He told Brooke that Ward had asked Christine to get information from Profumo on nuclear warheads. The Home Secretary wanted to know of there was a case for prosecuting Ward under the Official Secrets Act. Hollis evasively replied that the evidence was shaky. But he had planted the idea that the buck should be passed, not to the Minister of War, but to the ‘provider of popsies’, Stephen Ward.

Brooke now turned the guns of the Establishment on Ward. Was there, he asked the Police Commissioner, Sir Joseph Simpson, a police interest in Ward? Simpson said there might be some basis for prosecuting him in connection with his girls, but the evidence would be hard to get. There now began a vice investigation out of all proportion to Ward’s alleged offences.

Two days before the Brooke meeting, the Criminal Investigation Department began receiving anonymous mail. It alleged that ‘Ward was living off immoral earnings of girls’. Significantly, the public were never allowed to see the letters. There is only one serious candidate for the poison-pen writer – John Lewis.

The first statements taken in the police investigation of Ward came from Christine Keeler. They contained details of her relationship with Profumo which – as Lord Denning later admitted in his laborious prose – ‘one would think… not likely to have been invented.’ The police now knew, if they had not known already, that Profumo had lied in Parliament – but that was not the issue. Their job was to get Ward.

‘I became aware that the police had started asking questions,’ Ward wrote. ‘It only came home to me most gradually that these questions were directed against me… now the full horror of the situation came home to me, and I started to feel hunted.’ Ward flailed around for help. On 7 May, he met the Prime Minister’s secretary, Timothy Bligh, with an MI5 man sitting in. ‘You see,’ said Ward hopefully, ‘the facts as presented in Parliament were not strictly speaking just like that… I made a considerable sacrifice for Mr. Profumo… I feel I should tell you the truth of what really happened. I know myself here that there is a great deal of potentially extremely explosive material in what I’ve told you’.

Ward was becoming increasingly desperate about the scale of the investigation. ‘The Marylebone police are questioning my patients and friends in a line which is extremely damaging to me both professionally and socially. Over the past weeks, I have done what I could to shield Mr. Profumo from his indiscretion about which I complained to the Security Services at the time.’

His assertion that he had told MI5 about Profumo’s affair with Christine while it was still going on was simply denied. ‘There is no truth,’ MI5’s Hollis reported to the Prime Minister’s office, ‘in the story that the Security Service was informed of Mr. Profumo’s alleged visits to Ward or Miss Keeler.’ It was a lie, of course, as several former MI5 officers would shame-facedly confirm nearly two decades later.

In the meantime, ‘The People’ newspaper was preparing to step into the gap left by the decision of the ‘Sunday Pictorial’ to drop the Profumo story. Editor Sam Campbell intended to expose Profumo as a liar. He told the Police Commissioner and the Commissioner warned the Government.

On Friday 31 May, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Dilhorne, told Profumo he would interview him in a week’s time. The minister responded by going to Venice with his wife – on holiday. Before the weekend was over, a telegram from Dilhorne destroyed any illusion that his lie would hold up: would he please return to London? Profumo talked through the night with his wife, then decided to go home and tell the truth.

Profumo told Timothy Bligh that he had indeed slept with Christine Keeler. His resignation letter read in, in part:

‘Dear Prime Minister

I said that there had been no impropriety in this association. To my very deep regret I have to admit that this was not true… I have come to realise that, by this deception, I have been guilty of a grave misdemeanour… I cannot remain a member of your administration, nor of the House of Commons…I cannot tell you of my deep remorse…’

Harold Macmillan wrote back:

‘This is a great tragedy for you, your family and your friends. Nevertheless, I have no alternative but to advise the Queen to accept your resignation.’

John and Valerie Profumo successfully went into hiding for several days. Astonishingly quickly, as one observer noted, ‘Profumo was far from the stage, heading back fast towards obscurity.’ Ward was at Bryanston Mews when the resignation news came through, with the press at his door. He was now at his wit’s end, harried by reporters and abandoned by is rich friends. When a former patient offered Ward sanctuary at his home in Watford, Ward gratefully accepted.

He emerged blinking into the light and squeezed into his Jaguar, only to find the street blocked by press cars. Frantic, Ward drove straight into one of the vehicles, bulldozing himself an escape route. The man with unflappable charm was finally snapping.

On 8 June, Ward was arrested at Watford by two policemen. He was taken to Marylebone Police Station and charged: ‘That he, being a man, did on divers dates between January 1961 and 8 June 1963, knowingly live wholly or in part on the earnings of prostitution at 17 Wimpole Mews, contrary to section 30 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956.’ Other charges were to follow.

Profumo lost his career, but much worse was to befall Stephen Ward. He had become the scapegoat for the Government’s embarrassment and of a security service determined to cover its tracks. While Profumo had been allowed to disappear from circulation, Ward was forced to remain in the full glare of publicity, hounded by the press, and deserted by the people he thought were his friends.

For the crowds, ten deep, that gathered outside the Old Bailey – London’s Central Criminal Court – Stephen Ward’s trial looked liked being the ‘trial of the century’ or at least a national entertainment. People had even queued overnight for a seat in the small public gallery.

Inside the ritual began with the arrival in court of the sheriff and alderman and the judge, Sir Archibald Marshall. Nicknamed ‘the Hen’, Marshall held stern old-fashioned values. He ‘could hardly be expected to make allowances for the renegade son of a canon,’ wrote a chronicler of the Old Bailey. ‘His demeanour and the very inflection of his voice implied moral disapproval…’

The prosecuting barrister was Mervyn Griffith-Jones, a man capable of moral outrage at the slightest failing. He was so much out of touch with the modern world that at the 1960 ‘Lady Chatterleys’s Lover’ obscenity trial, he had solemnly asked the jury whether it was a ‘book you’d want your wife and servants to read.’

Stephen Ward’s defence counsel was James Burge, a jovial man who, it has been said, was a model for writer John Mortimer’s famous character, Rumpole of the Bailey. Burge had a bad back and Ward treated him on the sofa in his chambers.

The trial was to last eight days. The prosecution called witnesses for the first four and a half days; thereafter it was the turn of the defence.

The trial began with the charges against Stephen Ward being read. He was accused of living on the earnings of prostitution. These immoral earnings were supposedly supplied by Christine Keeler between June 1961 and August 1962; by Mandy Rice-Davies between September and December 1962; and by two others, Ronna Ricardo and Vicky Barrett between January and June 1963. There were two other charges: of procuring a girl under twenty-one to have intercourse, and attempting to procure a girl under twenty-one to have sex with a third person.

To convict Ward, the prosecution had to do three things: prove that Ward was providing Christine and Mandy with ‘goods and services’ for carrying out the trade of prostitution; prove that the two girls were prostitutes; and have the evidence of Christine and Mandy corroborated by independent witnesses.

The prosecution began with Griffith-Jones’ opening speech, which portrayed Ward as a monster of depravity. This lasted one and a half hours.

The best evidence mustered against Ward came from the prosecution’s two most important witnesses – Christine and Mandy. They had been under great pressure from the police. Christine had been endlessly interrogated and to prevent Mandy making trips abroad, the police had twice arrested her at Heathrow Airport on trivial or false charges.

Christine was the first witness to appear. She wore a mustard-coloured outfit and her long copper hair hung down to her shoulders.

Griffith-Jones attempted to establish that Christine was a prostitute in league with Ward. He prised out of her the fact that she had had sex about six times, at Ward’s Wimpole Mews flat, with a Major James Eylan. He paid her £15 on each occasion. Ward knew nothing of the payments. She had sex with John Profumo several times. ‘On one occasion,’ said Christine, ‘he gave me money to give to my mother.’ Christine also had sex – for £50 – with a man referred to in court only as ‘Charles’. She has since confirmed that this was Charles Clore, the millionaire financier. Some of this money she gave to Ward, ‘to pay my debts,’ she said.

Mandy Rice-Davies, testifying on day two, said she had sex ‘ about five or six times’ with a man referred throughout the trial as ‘ the Indian doctor’. This was Emil Savundra, the crooked Ceylonese-born head of Fire, Auto and Marine Insurance. Savundra, Mandy said, gave her money after sex – between £15 and £25 a time. Mandy also spoke of the one occasion when she had slept with Lord Astor. When told that Astor had denied her claim she replied, to the laughter of the court, ‘Well he would, wouldn’t he?’

Like Christine, Mandy admitted having given Ward money occasionally – ‘just a couple of pounds, or something like that, but it was not in return for him introducing me to men. You have to pay where you live’. Both girls had contributed to the general day-to-day expenses at the Wimpole Mews flat, including the food bills – ‘in all about £25.’

The prosecution made a big issue out of how the girls met their men, in order to establish whether Ward was introducing girls to men expressly for sexual services. John Profumo and Lord Astor had come on the scene as a result of Ward’s socialising. Christine said she met James Eylan by herself, though Ward, she said, did introduce her to Charles Clore. He also allegedly suggested that an encounter with Clore would not go unrewarded.

In the witness-box, Mandy spoke about her relationship with the Indian doctor, Savundra. According to her, she met Savundra with Ward at a Marylebone coffee bar. Ward, she said, had already rented out her room for £25 so that he could use it for a daytime assignation with his girlfriend. It was the following day that Savundra turned up at the flat and the two of them – Mandy and the doctor – had sex. Christine had her own highly damaging testimony about Savundra. According to her, Ward had made the suggestion that she should ‘entertain’ him once a week – in return for money. The plan never came off, however.

The true facts might have come out had the men themselves been called as witnesses, yet Profumo and Astor, spoken of almost reverentially in court, were never called. Charles Clore’s surname was never revealed. Only Major James Eylan had the courage to appear. His ten-minute appearance in the witness-box established one thing beyond any doubt. In her relations with him, Christine had indeed prostituted herself. However, it was also clear from Eylan’s evidence that Ward was in no way involved.

Ronna Ricardo, produced by the prosecution on the third day of the trial, appeared with her hair dyed red and wearing a pink sweater. She readily admitted she was a prostitute. She was known as ‘Ronna the Lash’, and specialised in flagellation. Earlier, in a statement to the police and at the Ward committal proceedings, she had implicated the osteopath in a series of sex episodes that had involved money. Two days before the trial, however, Ronna retracted her first statements. ‘At no time,’ she said, ‘have I received any money on Stephen Ward’s premises, or given money to him.’ She lied because she had been led to believe that the police might take her baby daughter and younger sister out of her care.

‘Are you suggesting,’ asked Judge Marshall, ‘that the police had just put words into your mouth?’ ‘Yes,’ she replied.

The court also heard the testimony of a prostitute called Vickie Barrett, said to have visited Ward’s flat over a period of many weeks, and to have provided sex for money for several men. Perhaps purely by coincidence, Barrett had been arrested for soliciting on 3 July, the same day that Ward was committed for trial. In her diary, allegedly, were the names of Stephen Ward and five others. Thus the police had made their connection.

Vickie Barrett told the court that she had met other middle-aged men at the flat, that she had beaten several of them with a horsewhip – at a rate of £1 a stroke – and that Ward had kept the money they paid. One of these men, Barrett alleged, was Ward’s artist friend, Vasco Lazzolo, a successful society portrait painter with a taste for young women and prostitutes. (Lazzolo later admitted that he had in fact met Vickie Barrett, but never at Stephen Ward’s flat.)

On the afternoon of the fourth day, after Burge’s opening speech, Ward took the stand as the first witness for the defence. One of the major issues he dealt with was the financial arrangements between him and the girls. What money had they allegedly given him? This was at the heart of the charges – that Ward lived off immoral earnings.

The only payments, he said in answer to Burge’s questioning, had been occasional contributions to the rent, the telephone, and the electricity bill. Christine had been living rent-free at Wimpole Mews and he had, in fact given her £70-£80 as a loan. Mandy paid £6 a week rent for her room, but had only given Ward enough for the first month in advance. After that she paid nothing. For the two months that she stayed at Wimpole Mews, recovering from a suicide attempt (following Peter Rachman’s fatal heart attack in November 1962), her total contributions had been a mere £24, plus about £5 for the telephone.

The prosecution did not challenge this evidence. To one observer, the writer Ludovic Kennedy, the whole charge seemed ludicrous. He wondered how they could continue asserting that Ward was living on Mandy’s earnings. Not least when Christine had said on the first day of the trial, ‘I usually owed him more than I ever made.’ The show, however, went on.

On the fifth day, it was the prosecution’s turn to cross-examine Ward. Griffith-Jones repeatedly dwelt on Ward’s promiscuity. ‘So we start this story, do we,’ he said, ‘ with a man of forty-eight or forty-nine chasing two girls of sixteen?’ Although this attack on Ward’s morals strongly influenced the jury, it was not what Ward was actually on trial for.

When asked about Vickie Barrett’s evidence, Ward said it was a ‘tissue of lies from beginning to end.’ He vehemently denied he claim that she had gone with men at his flat for money, and that he had kept the cash. He admitted knowing Vickie and Ronna Ricardo, and having sex with them, but he had merely been their client.

One of the last witnesses was Frances Brown. Under Griffith-Jones’ cross-questioning she admitted visiting both Lazzolo and Ward at their respective homes, along with Vickie Barrett. Vickie had sex with both men, during which she (Frances) had either ‘helped’ or ‘looked on’, but she knew nothing of Ward taking money.

Judge Marshall’s summing-up for the jury took up most of Tuesday afternoon, 30 July. The printed version of the summing-up seems clear and balanced. This is not how it came across in court. Those who were there remembered how Marshall’s tone of voice and emphasis belied what he said. A French reporter from ‘France-Soir’ wrote: ‘Monsieur Marshall is a puritan, and Ward the roué, the libertine, the cynic, appalled him… every time Marshall explained to the jury the questions they would have to answer, his voice gave it away: Marshall did not like Ward, for he had brought a scandal upon England.’

For the first two charges (living off immoral earnings), Justice Marshall told the jury they must decide three questions: Were Christine and Mandy prostitutes? Did Ward know they were? Did he knowingly receive from them or others money for ‘the introduction and facilities for sexual intercourse which he provided?’

Marshall told the jury that, to decide a man was guilty of living off a prostitute, it must be shown that he knowingly assisted her, and received money for it. Then the judge pointed out that Ward had been abandoned by his friends. ‘There are many reasons,’ he said, ‘why Ward has been abandoned in his extremity. You must not guess at them, but this is clear: if Ward was telling the truth in the witness-box, there are in this city many witnesses of high estate and low who could have come and testified support of his evidence.’

Although Ward had been warned to expect nothing from the Establishment, he had hoped from the start that Lord Astor would come to his aid, to restore his ‘good name’. Astor, however, stayed silent, not only on the advice of a solicitor, but – now that he had become a ‘fervent Christian’ – on the ‘spiritual direction of a bishop. Now that his friends had deserted him, Ward belatedly realised their true calibre.

In a cruel way, the judge managed to turn against Ward the fact that none of his high-society friends had the courage to come and speak up on his behalf. It was a broadside that had a great effect on the jury.

The summing-up was unfinished when the court rose, as usual, at half-past four in the afternoon. Ward was shattered by the judge’s attitude. He asked his solicitor, Jack Wheatley, for a considered opinion of his chances. ‘Guilty – and a two-year sentence,’ Wheatley replied.

During the trial, the Crown prosecutor described Stephen Ward as ‘thoroughly immoral… a filthy fellow… a wicked, wicked creature.’ It is true that Ward was no angel. Many of the parties he attended rapidly turned into sex games, but this had nothing to do with the charges that had been brought against him. ‘These parties,’ Ward said, ‘nearly always started in the same way – a few drinks, and one or other of the girls would start the ball rolling – usually one would offer to do a striptease. That was enough.’

The parties could last for days, kept going with the aid of pills, such as Benzedrine or Methedrine, ground up and added to a guest’s drinks. The people who attended them were often rich and famous; they included Tory MPs, a member of the Royal family [Princess Margaret possibly, but surely not Brenda?] and on one occasion, American singer Bing Crosby.

Some of the gatherings were devoted to sado-masochism. Ward was a frequent guest at the parties of Mariella Novotny. One of the most famous, held in 1961, was the ‘Man in the Mask’ party. Mandy Rice-Davies recalls: ‘Mariella was there wearing a kind of corset and carrying a whip. Naked people were everywhere…’ There was also a man in a rubber mask, who, writes Novotny, ‘was strapped between wooden pillars. A whip was placed in front of his naked figure. As each guest arrived they gave him one stroke…’ Later, he served them all dinner. The man has never been positively identified.

Born in 1912, Stephen Ward was the son of a Hertfordshire vicar and an Irish mother whose family were from landed gentry. From his father, he inherited a strong belief in social equality; from his mother, social aspiration.

Stephen was sent to Canford, a lesser public school in Dorset, and its code of behaviour left a profound mark. Forty years later, he recalled a dormitory incident in which a boy’s skull was fractured. He refused to divulge the culprit, taking the blame himself and receiving a beating in front of the whole school. During the Profumo affair, this was still a bitter memory. ‘They expect me to go along with this stupid public school convention that good chaps don’t tell. Well, I didn’t tell once, but not this time…’

After Canford and short-lived jobs in London, Germany and France, a family friend encouraged Stephen to study osteopathy in the U.S.A. The warmth and hospitality of the American people made a deep impression, allowing him to shed his British inhibition. In Chicago, Stephen explored the brothel district. This fascination with the seamy side of sex had emerged earlier in the red light areas of Hamburg and Paris.

Stephen’s interest in women was mostly voyeuristic. At sex parties he watched rather than participated; with his women he enjoyed discussing their sexual exploits rather than having intercourse with them himself.

Emotionally, Stephen was keenly affected by rejection. Unable to stop the marriage of an early sweetheart on his return from America in the late 1930’s, he said: ‘This was my first brush with pain… I decided that I would never again become so seriously involved with anyone.’ After his second great love, Eunice Bailey, married someone else, he tried to commit suicide – perhaps his second such attempt. The first may have occurred in the army in 1945.

From the late 1940’s onwards, Stephen’s various flats became magnets for young women looking for a place to stay. The atmosphere was relaxed and parties were attended by people as varied as typists, prostitutes and even royalty.

The girls themselves, says writer Frederick Mullally, loved Stephen ‘as a girl might love an elder brother or a father. Stephen used girls to gain entry to society parties, but he never abused them… he flourished in the sensual hothouse of a home forever strewn with discarded nylons, lip-printed tissues, cosmetic debris.’ Stephen’s friend, Ellis Stungo, adds: He never lived off the girls or ran a call-girl service… he was so generous and wanted to help people.

During the Profumo affair, when the stage-show ‘My Fair Lady’ was playing, Stephen was dubbed a modern Professor Higgins. [‘Private Eye’ magazine called him ‘Dr. Spook’.] He groomed a succession of young women for social success, but rarely fell in love with his creations. He genuinely liked women as people and had platonic friendships with many.

Stephen Ward had another side. His attendance at high-society parties that involved group sex and sado-masochism gave him inside secrets. Says journalist Warwick Charlton: ‘Many highly placed men shared his sexual liking… he gained confidences from his patients in his consulting rooms… if a few patients had their sexual needs attended to at the same time by way of a few little parties introductions, well, that was life, wasn’t it?’

As the scandal evolved during 1963, Stephen continued to shield his friends from exposure. Even in court, he minimised damaging testimony. He always thought they would come to his aid. They never did.

It was the evening of 30 July 1963, the second to last day of the trial. The judge was only half way through his summing-up. Stephen Ward went to a coffee bar with his current girlfriend, a young singer, Julie Gulliver. They then went back to the Chelsea flat of the man giving Ward shelter during the trial, advertising executive Noel Howard-Jones. There, in Mallord Street, Ward began writing letters to be delivered ‘only if I am convicted and sent to prison.’ He handed twelve of them over to Howard-Jones. Julie Gulliver thought Ward looked ‘noticeably upset’ and uncharacteristically restless.

Ward saw Tom Mangold, one of the few journalists he still trusted. Mangold drove to Mallord Street, where he found Ward at the end of his tether. ‘He felt absolutely betrayed’. He asked Mangold to post the letters he had written. The journalist knew they were suicide notes and refused to post them; one was addressed to Mangold himself. ‘Take your letter,’ said Ward, ‘but don’t open it till I’m dead’.

Julie Gulliver stayed with Ward until about 11.30 pm, when he drove her back home, hugged her, and said a final ‘goodbye’. At 8.30 the next morning, the telephone woke Howard-Jones. He knew the phone was next to his guest, Ward, who was sleeping in the lounge. Yet the phone kept ringing. He stumbled out to take the call. He told the inquest, ‘I turned round and saw him. I thought he was dead. His face was a purple colour. His mouth was open… I slapped his face and he breathed just once. I tried an amateur type of respiration.’ Howard-Jones then telephoned for an ambulance.

Twenty minutes later, Ward was admitted to St. Stephen’s Hospital, a few streets away on Fulham Road. He was unconscious and did not respond to stimuli. After an hour, his condition had improved and he was transferred to a ward. The doctors thought he might pull through.

At the Old Bailey the court reconvened. Judge Marshall said: ‘I want it to be understood that Ward shall be immediately put under surveillance. Bail is withdrawn from now, and the normal steps shall be taken to secure greater security.’ Like most of his statements at the trial, the judge’s words seemed unreal. He continued his summing up as if nothing had happened.

The jury deliberated all afternoon. Shortly after 7 pm they came back with a decision. They declared Stephen Ward guilty on the first two counts of living on the immoral earnings of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. Many thought that this was an amazing verdict. It may have been possible to argue Ward’s guilt according to legal technicalities, but few believed he was a pimp.

One juror later said: ‘Most of us had already made up our minds when we heard about all the perversions and sex. You’ve got to remember that we weren’t as liberal-minded as we are today. It was very disgusting to us. What swayed us was the prosecution lawyer, Griffith-Jones. He had such an air of utter supremacy that when Ward went into the dock he was already done for before he opened his mouth…We were told that Ward was guilty… and the judge guided us towards the fact that he was indeed guilty.’

The judge postponed sentence until Ward could appear. But Ward had taken a dangerous overdose of barbiturates and did not look likely to survive. A pill bottle had been found at his side. The autopsy later indicated that he had taken the equivalent of fourteen to twenty 1.5 grain sleeping tablets.

At St. Stephen’s Hospital, Ward clung to life. A prison officer sat nearby to see he did not escape – a totally unlikely event. His condition began to deteriorate. A tracheotomy was performed and later he was given a heart massage. At 3.45 on the afternoon of 3 August, after seventy-none hours in a coma, Stephen Ward died.

The funeral took place a week later at Mortlake Crematorium. Only his brother Raymond, his sister Patricia, two cousins, his solicitor and Julie Gulliver were present. A large wreath of white roses, dedicated to ‘Stephen Ward, a victim of British hypocrisy’, was sent by twenty-one British writers and artists including playwright John Osborne and critic Kenneth Tynan. Another wreath was laid on Cheltenham War Memorial. A note upon it read: ‘We three girls of Cheltenham Ladies’ College have laid this wreath as a tribute to dear Dr. Stephen Ward, who dared to live… as a human being and not just as a dummy. An outraged society revenged itself upon him.’

Mervyn Griffith-Jones, the prosecuting counsel, is said to have wept when told of Ward’s death; as did Ward’s defence counsel, James Burge. [I, too, have shed a few tears while typing the paragraph above]. Burge later said: ‘Ward’s case was rigged… Judge Marshall murdered Stephen Ward. It’s as simple as that.’

One of Ward’s suicide notes was sent to Marshall. On receiving it, the judge paled, repeating, ‘But he was guilty, you know, he was guilty.’ Another note went to Vickie Barrett. ‘I don’t know what it was or who it was that made you do what you did,’ he wrote. ‘But if you have any decency left, you should tell the truth.’ A reporter, Barry O’Brien, called on Barrett immediately after Ward’s death. ‘It was all lies,’ she said of her sworn testimony. ‘But I never thought he would die.’ She later retracted her retraction.

One man who seemed indifferent to the trial was Lord Astor. At the height of the scandal, he showed up at Ascot looking – as a gossip columnist in the ‘Daily Express’ reported – ‘urbane and relaxed’. Mandy Rice-Davies took Ward’s death badly. ‘I was stricken with anger and remorse and sorrow.’ Christine Keeler was hysterical with grief. Ward had been her closest friend and she had never experienced death before. Christine was later to spend six months of a nine-month sentence in Holloway Prison for the perjury offence arising out of Lucky Gordon’s trial and conviction. She welcomed it, saying it was ‘a bit of peace. I was psychologically exhausted.’ How Profumo reacted to Ward’s death is not known. He slipped quietly into affluent obscurity.

Prime Minister Macmillan admitted that the scandal had ‘inflicted a deep, bitter and lasting wound.’ Four months after Profumo’s resignation, Macmillan, too ill to carry on, handed the premiership to Lord Home. One year later, in October 1964, thirteen years of Conservative rule came to an end when Harold Wilson narrowly won the General Election.

Profumo believed he could get away with it because he did not think anyone would dare to publish the truth. No one, he believed, would challenge the ruling class to which he belonged. Only a few, however, have raised their heads above the parapet and printed the truth.

The following is taken from an interview that Christine gave in June 1990.

Her early childhood, she recalls, was largely uneventful. But her innocence was shattered, she maintains, by a period of sexual overtures from her stepfather that eventually forced her to leave home.

‘He had a big crush on me from about the age of twelve till I was fifteen. I used to go to sleep at night and be scared that he’d come and grab hold of me. I felt that he was madly in love with me. On one occasion, when my mother went into hospital, he tried to kiss me and rubbed my chest with ‘Vick’, saying it was because I had a cold. I didn’t want to leave my home, but I had to.’

She met Stephen Ward at Murray’s Cabaret Club in London.

‘Stephen was charming, terribly well-spoken. He had a command of the English language, and was very persuasive. He had that gift of getting people to do what he wanted – just his voice would make you go stupid. He was not handsome, but pleasant looking. He was far too old for me, but he had a very good physique.
He needed me for company and to wait on him, make his coffee, get him something to eat…I was like the au pair, although he didn’t pay me. I used to keep the place clean and, if anyone came round, I’d be quiet while they talked. I used to go out [to Murray’s] and he used to wait for me to come back. There was absolutely no sex whatsoever. He wasn’t a very sexual man at all – he had a few girlfriends here and there. He took me to a sex party once – I didn’t enjoy it.
I worshipped him. He was like my father. Whatever Stephen said, I did. I thought he had my best interests at heart. I suppose he did make me speak at little better. Obviously there was a bit of grooming living with somebody like that, but then my stepfather brought me up to speak properly and be well-mannered.
Stephen was definitely spying. The embarrassing thing was that no one was aware of it. He was getting money from the Russians. I knew that he was doing it, but it didn’t seem that serious. He was setting me up because he wanted to find information. He left it so that if ever I said anything, he could say, “it’s not me, it’s her.” I was used. I was an innocent.’

Christine’s involvement with Ivanov was nothing more than a one-night stand, an act of impulse on her part that was not encouraged by Stephen Ward.

‘I was upset, because I was actually going out with a chap called Noel Howard-Jones…Stephen didn’t know this and he would have been most jealous. Along came Noel with this beautiful young girl [to Cliveden]. I was absolutely choked. I came back to London with Eugene and that’s why I jumped into bed with him. There wasn’t really any sort of relationship. He was quite a good-looking chap compared to most of Stephen’s friends, but he was still too old for me. After the incident he didn’t come round for a while and when I did see him, we didn’t look into each other’s eyes.’

Of her liaison with Profumo she says:

‘He was a flirty sort of chap… very intelligent… a very nice man. I knew it wasn’t going to last. I didn’t want to be serious with him. He wanted me to move out of Stephen’s place and I thought, “Oh God, no way; I’ll probably land up as some MP’s whore…” and I didn’t want to do that.
Stephen was horrible to me really because he was setting me up. Ivanov had asked Stephen to find out when the Germans were going to get the bomb and he wanted me to find out information [from Profumo]. I was being pushed by Stephen into something I didn’t want to do.’

Christine believes that the report by Lord Denning on the Profumo case was a cover-up which played up the sex angle in order to hide the truth about the risk to national security.

‘Lord Denning left all of these things out. He dragged in an incident [the Man in the Mask party] which had nothing to do with the Profumo affair whatsoever. The report was just a set-up to make it into a sex case… I was the scapegoat.’

She has mixed feelings about her friendship with Mandy Rice-Davies.

‘We were absolute dynamite together. What she wouldn’t do I would and what I wouldn’t do she would. Stephen didn’t like Mandy. He thought she was mercenary. The only thing Mandy was interested in was Mandy.’

The whole episode with Lucky Gordon, leading to her prison sentence for perjury, leaves nothing but bad memories for Christine.

‘Gordon was obsessed with me although I didn’t want to know him. He was never my boyfriend… he was very lucky that he came across me when I didn’t have my gun, otherwise I would have shot him. By the time I got out of prison, I was mentally very wounded. I got all the blame, filth and dirt. I felt dirty and ashamed – for nothing.’

Looking back over her life, Christine says,

‘I think Stephen was about the only person that I’ve ever lost who has been really close to me. I have not been very good at relationships; I don’t have them any more.’

By the summer of 1963, the Macmillan government was tottering. It had been badly damaged by a series of scandals including the Profumo Affair. Another crisis that threatened its stability in 1963 centred on a photograph produced at the Duchess of Argyll’s sensational divorce hearings.

The picture showed the Duchess performing fellatio with an unknown man at her London home. The top of the photograph had been cut off, so that the man’s head was missing. German newspapers claimed he was a Conservative minister, Duncan Sandys.

In June 1963, Sandys admitted to Macmillan that though he was not the headless man, he had been involved with the lady. Sandys offered to resign but was stopped at the last moment. An enquiry into the ‘headless man’ rumours by Lord Denning cleared Sandys, [of course] but it was a close call. Had the incident been made public, it would probably have proved the last straw for the government that was to fall one year later.

THE END