Cleveland Street Scandal 

James Pope Hennessy, Queen Mary's official biographer, spoke to many people then still living who actually knew Prince Eddy (see his posthumously published book of interviews), so his statement that Eddy's private life was 'dissipated' must be taken as gospel (as too must his statements with regard to Eddy's intellectual slowness). Hennessy knew what he was writing about, and indeed, died at the hands of rough trade. His close friend James Lees Milne, who was bisexual, and with whom one can presume he would have shared the more unpublishable results of his findings, wrote the first frank biography of Lord Esher, the grey eminence of the Edwardian royal court who was pederastic, and who kept a folder of letters from parties about the scandal. Both Lees Milne, and later Theo Aronson used it for their respective books which touched on the scandal. To suggest that Andrew Cook's thinly argued book settles the case with regard to PAV's possible involvement in Cleveland Street is utterly ridiculous.