1963: The Profumo scandal | Politics | The Guardian Politics past 1963: The Profumo scandal At the height of the cold war in the early 60s, as the established order was challenged as never before, Britons paid rapt attention to a sordid little affair which involved a cabinet minister, a showgirl and a Soviet naval attache. Derek Brown looks back on 1963 John Profumo. Tuesday 10 April 2001 06.01 EDT First published on Tuesday 10 April 2001 06.01 EDT (Which was rather late for me) Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles' first LP. - Philip Larkin, 'Annus Mirabilis' That old rogue Larkin was out by a few years of course, but he captured perfectly the mood of the early 1960s . It was an era in which anything was possible and nothing was safe; a time when the established order was being challenged, subverted, and ultimately buried. The Chatterley ban was indeed one of the first shibboleths to evaporate.

In August 1960 Penguin was prosecuted for publishing one of DH Lawrence's lesser works, Lady Chatterley's Lover, notable only for its use of the f-word and some sublimely silly sex scenes. The trial was farcical - at one stage the jurors were invited to consider whether they would be happy for their wives and servants to read such a book - and the outcome rarely in doubt. When Penguin was given the go ahead to publish, there was minor pandemonium: the initial print run of 200,000 copies sold out on the day of issue, November 10, at the then rather stiff price of 3s 6d (17.5p). Several more sensations were to unfold before - to follow Larkin's conceit - the Beatles' first LP. 1961 saw the first publication of a little magazine trying to revive an age old tradition of political and social satire. It was called Private Eye . In the same year, and the same spirit, a group of Cambridge graduates - Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Jonathan Miller - brought their irreverent revue, Beyond the Fringe, to London's West End.

In 1962 satire burst out on television, with the late night show That Was The Week That Was, or TW3 to its aficionados. It thrived by debunking religion, politics, royalty and sex, attracting a colossal audience of some 12m viewers - almost as many as the other TV sensation of the age, Coronation Street - making presenter David Frost a national celebrity, and giving the BBC governors some sleepless nights. The mood of iconoclasm spread even to the Palace of Westminster. In 1961 a young and ardent Labour MP, Anthony Wedgwood-Benn, was barred from the House of Commons after winning a byelection at Bristol South-east, on account of having inherited a viscountcy. Tony Benn, as we now know him, went on to campaign successfully for peers to be allowed to renounce the titles - and, in his case, to shear several syllables off their names as well. The mood of the day was embodied in the explosion of pop culture . Towards the end of 1962 there was a surge of interest in a new group - they were not called bands then - from Liverpool.

It wasn't so much the music at first which caught the public eye (their first single, Love Me Do, barely scraped into the Top 20), but rather their bizarrely long hair. The following year, curiosity became craze , and the Beatles were on their way to their first LP. The political context Some commentators have compared the convulsions of the early 1960s, leading up to the election of Harold Wilson's first Labour government in 1964, with the sweeping aside of the Thatcher-Major years and the accession of Tony Blair in 1997. The analogy is tempting: both events involved the ending of long periods of unbroken Conservative government, and the promise at least of a new era. But it is a false comparison none the less. What happened in 1997 was a change of management and style. In 1964, the upheaval was much more fundamental. At the start of the decade, the prime minister, Harold Macmillan , was still basking in the glow of his 1959 near-landslide election victory, with a Commons majority of over 100.

The cartoonists called him Supermac, and political writers were addicted to the adjective "unflappable". Urbane, patrician and when the occasion demanded utterly ruthless, he seemed scarcely threatened by a Labour party wracked by left-right dissent. But Supermac was not invincible at all. There was rising discontent in the country and in the Tory party over Britain's lacklustre postwar economic performance. Japan and Germany were booming, while the UK's hidebound economy was bedevilled by inflation and dreadful labour relations. Belatedly, the government lumbered towards an application to join the European Economic Community, universally known as the Common Market, but the nation was less and less enamoured by ministers who seemed to represent a bygone age. Rising discontent led to a series of resounding byelection defeats for the government, most sensationally at Orpington in Kent in March 1962, when a Tory majority of nearly 15,000 was turned into a majority of 7,800 for Jeremy Lubbock of the suddenly resurgent Liberal party. Macmillan, hitherto unflappable, began to flap like a wet hen.

Four months after Orpington, in one of the most ruthless political bloodlettings of modern times, he abruptly sacked and replaced seven senior ministers - one-third of the entire cabinet. It was instantly dubbed 'the night of the long knives'. Supermac became Mac the Knife. Conservative disarray, meanwhile, was being mirrored by Labour consolidation. For much of the 1950s, the party had been convulsed by ideological wrangling, most notably over the issue of nuclear disarmament. Hugh Gaitskell, who had taken over the leadership from the last Labour prime minister, Clement Attlee, was politically all but hamstrung by the internecine strife. But the new decade, with its intangible but unmistakable sense of change, brought a new sense of purpose - and opportunity - to the party. By the time Aneurin Bevan, the leading leftist scourge of the establishment, died in 1960, the party was reinventing itself as a movement for change. Harold Wilson, seen as a pragmatic leftist, first challenged Gaitskell for the leadership, unsuccessfully, in November 1960.

But he and his generation of Labour leaders - George Brown, Jim Callaghan, Denis Healey - were honing a new style of politics which looked to the challenges of the future, not the ideology of the past. That their time was coming, they had no doubt. But they could not have known that their ascent to power would be hastened by a scandal more sensational than any in modern British politics. Tarts, toffs and traitors Even today, in our peculiar society, we get excited when ministers and other public figures are caught with their pants down. In 1963, the very notion was deeply, deliciously shocking. It was still mostly a pre-pill, pre-promiscuity age, when unmarried pregnancy was a matter of deep family shame, and backstreet abortionists thrived. The tabloid newspapers were already brash but not yet sex-crazed, and were by and large polite to politicians. But when the storm broke, it was not simply driven by sex; there was a deep, dark context of rank treachery.

Since the early 1950s, when diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean fled to their paymasters in Moscow, the chattering classes had speculated about the existence of a "third man". The brave new world of the 1960s did nothing to curb the tittle-tattle; indeed, as the cold war intensified, the issue assumed ever more menacing implications. In 1961 George Blake, another ex-diplomat, was given a record 42-year prison sentence for spying for the Russians. Sensationally, he was said to have been brainwashed by communists while in captivity in Korea. Even more sensationally, he was to escape from jail after serving only five years. The cold war was at its coldest, and the Soviet Union was at the zenith of its power, launching the first man into space , and defying the world by supervising the construction of the Berlin Wall . America's apparent impotence, meanwhile, was underlined by the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. In 1962, the Cuban missile crisis brought the world terrifyingly close to nuclear annihilation .

Close to the peak of the crisis, a 38-year-old Admiralty clerk and the son of a vicar, William Vassall, was jailed for 18 years for spying for the USSR. He had been recruited by the KGB in a homosexual "honey trap". In July 1963 the government named Kim Philby, former Foreign Office colleague of Burgess and Maclean, as the "third man". But even that huge revelation was subsumed in a greater sensation now gripping the nation. For months, rumours had circulated about the private life of John Dennis Profumo , secretary of state for war. Educated at Harrow and Oxford, he was a quintessential high Tory who had achieved cabinet rank after serving in a number of junior posts. He was married to the film star Valerie Hobson, and moved effortlessly in the highest of society. In the deferential spirit of the 1950s, the rumours may have been restricted to salon gossip. Now, in the new age of iconoclasm, the whispers were amplified in the media. That Was The Week That Was scored a telling blow with a splendid parody of the old music hall number, She was Poor but she was Honest.

The words of the new version went: "See him in the House of Commons / Making laws to put the blame / While the object of his passion / Walks the streets to hide her shame." The "object of his passion" was a young woman whose name is now embedded in British political folklore: Christine Keeler. Keeler, unlike Profumo, had had an extremely undistinguished life. Born in 1942, she left home at 16 after an unhappy childhood in the Thames Valley, and gravitated to London where she found work of a sort at Murray's cabaret club. There she met and befriended another showgirl, Marilyn "Mandy" Rice-Davies. Soon, both young women had drifted into the racy circle around Stephen Ward, a fashionable West End osteopath and socialite. Keeler's relationship with Ward was both torrid and rocky. They broke up several times, but he seemed to exercise an almost centripetal force on her, and always she drifted back. Soon both young women were celebrated players, albeit with bit parts, in Ward's sexual circus.

Not all the action was centred on Ward's Wimpole Mews flat, equipped with two-way mirrors and other aids to lubricity. Soon, Keeler and Rice-Davies were circulating in more exalted milieux, including Lord Astor's country mansion of Cliveden. It was there that John Profumo first laid eyes on her. A brief but passionate affair ensued, and tongues began to wag. Even then, it might have been brushed under the carpet in the time honoured English way, but Profumo made a fundamental error: he lied to the House of Commons. In March 1963 he told the chamber that there was "no impropriety whatever" in his relationship with Keeler. Ten weeks later he appeared before MPs again to say "with deep remorse" that he had misled the House, and would resign. What brought Profumo down even more than his deceit of the Commons, was the startling revelation that Keeler had also slept with Eugene Ivanov, the naval attache at the Soviet embassy. It was that detail which captured world attention, notably in the United States, where the FBI compiled a detailed report called Operation Bowtie .

In Britain, Profumo's downfall naturally caused a huge sensation, inflated by the establishment's crude and cruel attempts to find scapegoats for its own embarrassment. As usual, official wrath was turned on those least able to defend themselves. Stephen Ward was prosecuted for living on immoral earnings. On the last day of his trial , he killed himself with an overdose of sleeping tablets. Keeler was also tried and imprisoned on related charges. Rice-Davies, who escaped prosecution, earned a dubious immortality when, during the Ward trial, she was told that Lord Astor disputed her version of events and replied: "He would, wouldn't he?" Less than two months after Ward's tragic and mysterious death, an official report was produced by Lord Denning, master of the rolls. It was a hot number : hundreds queued to buy a copy when it was released at midnight. But there were few juicy bits in Denning's findings. He criticised the government for failing to deal with the affair more quickly, but concluded that national security had not been compromised. And, to the dismay of the reading public, he failed to identify the man who, naked except for a mask, had served at Ward's dinner parties.

There had been rumours that the "man in a mask" was a cabinet minister but Denning, who interviewed him, denied it. There it ended, though it never really went away. The 1989 movie, Scandal reignited some of the controversy, and Christine Keeler raked over the embers in her autobiography , The Truth At Last, published early in 2001. In it, she revived some of the more startling claims made at the time - though alas she was unable to offer convincing new evidence to back them up. She claims for example, that the then MI5 chief, Sir Roger Hollis, was a Soviet spy; and that Stephen Ward ran a spy ring which included Hollis and Sir Anthony Blunt, who was surveyor of the Queen's pictures. Blunt was indeed revealed as a long-time Soviet agent in the 1980s, around the same time that Hollis, the object of numerous rumours, was officially cleared. Now 58, Keeler has consistently said that successive governments have hushed up the truth of the sordid, sensational Profumo affair. Her only new (and unverifiable) claim, is that the cabinet minister made her pregnant .

And Profumo himself? Remarkably, he is still with us at 86, though friends say he is very frail now. It's nearly four decades since his humiliating fall from grace; years which he has devoted largely to charity work in London's East End. He has also remained true to his tribal code of honour, having never uttered a public word on the events which shook the nation in 1963. The aftermath The Profumo affair was no passing sensation. It all but brought down the Macmillan government and it almost certainly finished Macmillan himself as prime minister. In October 1963, less than a month after publication of the Denning report, the prime minister resigned citing ill health. There were no party elections in those days, and the mantle passed to the most improbable of candidates, the 14th Earl of Home. The Tory mandarins - known as "the magic circle" - were desperate to keep out the obvious successor, Rab Butler , who was on the liberal wing of the party.

They preferred the Old Etonian, cricket-loving laird, who was only too happy to oblige, quickly using the recent legislation sparked by the Anthony Wedgwood-Benn affair to renounce his ancient title and transform into being plain Sir Alec Douglas-Home . It very nearly worked. Weeks after the installation of the new prime minister, the upheaval was subsumed in the global shock of the assassination of John F Kennedy . A year later, in October 1964, Sir Alec called a general election . The polls were against him and so were the satirists, who simply could not take seriously the cadaverous-featured drawling aristocrat. But the country was not so sure: the economy was looking up, the hugely respected Hugh Gaitskell had died and been replaced by the wily Harold Wilson, and Labour had been out of office since 1951. In the end, that last point almost certainly swung the election. The slogan "13 wasted years" was drummed home again and again, and found resonance with an electorate who knew they were living in a new age; one that was no longer represented by the Tory old guard who had propelled an earl into Downing Street.

The result was close, though. Labour won 317 seats, the Conservatives 303, and the Liberals nine. Taking the Speaker and deputies into account, Wilson had a Commons majority of just four, to support him in his promise to deliver Britain into a new age. Denning Report (1963) - YouTube Denning Report (1963) Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Apr 13, 2014 London. GV. Whitehall. AS. Name "Treasury" over doorway. SV. & GV. Interior, Lord Alfred Thompson Denning, Master of the Rolls, sitting at his desk writing his report on Profumo affair. CU. Lord Denning. CU. A copy of Lord Denning's report on table. LV. Exterior, people queuing up outside HM Stationery Office at midnight waiting for the doors to open. CU. Man waiting. LV. Crowds waiting outside the gates.

SCU. Man opens the gates and the crowds start to rush in. CU. Crowds trying to force their way in through gates. CU. Cameraman holding his camera high to get elevated shot. SV. People entering the stationery office, one man shielding his face with his hands. LV. Sign 'Read in Full Lord Denning's Report'. CU. Man shielding his face with his hand. SV. Official places on table a large packet of unwrapped reports. CU. Notice on package "Not to be opened until 00.30 Thursday 26th September". LV. & CU. Men queuing up inside, waiting for reports. CU. Large stack of Denning Reports, pan to man receiving one. CU. Cash register tilling up 7/6d. GTV. Mass of people fighting for their copies of the Denning Report. SV. Man receiving about three copies. CU. Man receiving copy, pan to large pile of reports alongside cash register. CU. Cash register, 15/0d, pan down money being put into till. SV. Group of press photographers. CU. Elderly man with bowler hat. CU.

Hand picks up four copies of the report, pan up to man in bowler hat. GV. The Daily Mail printing press at work, printing copies of the Denning Report in the Daily Mail. SV. & CU. Papers being printed. CU. Man picks out paper from the press and checks the front page. CU. Newspaper showing headlines "Denning Verdict". SV. Exterior, newspaper placards on the Denning Report. CU. Newspaper placard "The Denning Report". CU. Sign outside shop "Denning Report Just Out". SV. Pan, people going into HM Stationery Office at 8 am. Side view, people buying their Denning Reports over the counter. SV. Member of staff leaning on pile of reports, board at the back of people. SV. Man outside shop wearing bowler hat and carrying umbrella reading a copy of the report. SV. & SCU. Another man coming out of Smith's bookshop, he stops and starts to read his copy. AS. Exterior, restaurant. SV. Interior of restaurant with couple seated at table - gag sequence, natural sound. Elderly man and attractive young woman are ordering food.

The man says to waiter: "We are absolutely in the clear, aren't we darling?" They raise glasses, cheer and take a sip. FILM ID:1774.4 A VIDEO FROM BRITISH PATHÉ. EXPLORE OUR ONLINE CHANNEL, BRITISH PATHÉ TV. IT'S FULL OF GREAT DOCUMENTARIES, FASCINATING INTERVIEWS, AND CLASSIC MOVIES. FOR LICENSING ENQUIRIES VISIT Category BBC ON THIS DAY | 8 | 1963: Ward charged over 'immoral earnings' 1963: Ward charged over 'immoral earnings' A key figure in the Profumo affair has been charged with living on immoral earnings. Dr Stephen Ward, a London osteopath and friend of Christine Keeler, was arrested in Watford and taken to Marylebone Lane police station. The arrest comes three days after the resignation of the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo. He admitted he had lied to parliament after MPs accused him of having a relationship with Miss Keeler, a 21-year-old call girl. MPs also allege that Miss Keeler had relations with a Russian naval attache and that the affair posed a risk to national security.

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan described the resignation as a "great tragedy". 'Extremely cheerful' Dr Ward has not been allowed bail but his literary agent, Pelham Pound, said he was "confident" he would be freed after his court appearance scheduled for Monday 13 June. Mr Pound visited Dr Ward at the police station and described him as "extremely cheerful". He had earlier collected some of Dr Ward's belongings from his Bryanston Mews home in Marylebone. Last night detectives searched his former flat at Wimpole Mews and took away some items in a brown paper parcel. Dr Ward has been charged with living on the "earnings of prostitution" at 17 Wimpole Mews since 1 January 1961. The son of the late Canon Arthur Evelyn Ward, Canon of Rochester Cathedral, Dr Ward has treated such illustrious names as Sir Winston Churchill, Paul Getty, Douglas Fairbanks and Elizabeth Taylor. He is also an artist and has had members of the Royal Family and politicians sit for him. In Context The Profumo affair was the biggest political sleaze story of the decade and threatened to topple the Conservative government under Harold Macmillan.

It also scandalised the nation, especially after sordid details of Dr Stephen Ward's lifestyle and his relationship with Christine Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies came out at his trial. Keeler, who lived with Ward at his Wimpole Mews flat, said he had introduced her to Lord Astor at his Cliveden stately home where she first met John Profumo. On the last day of the trial on 31 July 1963, Ward took an overdose of sleeping tablets. He was found guilty while in a coma and died three days later. Less than two months after his death, an official report produced by Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls, concluded Profumo's affair with Keeler had not endangered national security. Shortly after this, the prime minister resigned, his ill health exacerbated by the scandal. He was replaced with Earl Home, who renounced his peerage to become Sir Alec Douglas-Home in order to take up office.

Search ON THIS DAY by date It’s a Scandal – The Profumo Affair – Early Philips Colour TV Home OTHER INTERESTS It’s a Scandal – The Profumo Affair It’s a Scandal – The Profumo Affair Its now 2013 and Britain’s most sensational sex and security scandal is 50 years old. It is half a century since John Profumo, Secretary of State for War, resigned from Parliament after he was found to have lied in the House of Commons about having an affair with call girl Christine Keeler. The denial resulted in the exposure of a searing story of sex, suicide, intrigue and espionage – and demolished Profumo’s world of red-leather despatch boxes, scrambler telephones and the panoply of a Minister of the Crown. Profumo began 1963 as Secretary of State for War. He was a rising star of the Tory Party, close to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, a favoured visitor at Buckingham Palace, a war hero and the dashing husband of a famous film star.

Then, seven shots fired at a house in a quiet Marylebone mews by a jilted boyfriend of Christine Keeler triggered Britain’s most notorious political sex scandal of modern times. The Profumo affair convulsed Westminster for nearly six months. Macmillan’s Cabinet was shaken by Keeler’s revelations that she had sex with both Profumo and Commander Eugene Ivanov, a handsome Russian intelligence officer and the Soviet assistant naval attache in London. At the height of the crisis, Cabinet ministers feared some of their colleagues might become the targets for scandal-mongers. Christine Keeler photographed in 1963. There has got to be something special about a news story to push it onto a front page. Sometimes it’s grief. Or scandal. At other times it’s a significant event. Or a terrible crime. This story had just about everything: sex, politics, deceit, espionage, criminality, suicide, high society and an extra-marital affair. 5 June 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the resignation of the Conservative War Minister John Profumo – the culmination of a series of revelations that we now call the Profumo Affair. But this wasn’t just any old political scandal.

It is, in many ways, the political scandal of recent British history. It gripped the country and had tabloid newspapers fizzing with gossip, not least because it linked a world of sex parties and prostitution with the previously untouchable elite of British society. There were tales of organised orgies, including whipping parties at a house in Mayfair where, it was said, one of the guests became over-excited and died of a heart attack. On March 22 1963, battered by parliamentary gossip, Profumo delivered a personal statement to MPs denying any “impropriety whatsoever” in his relationship with Keeler. His claim that a platonic affair had ended in 1961 was accepted by the Cabinet. Downing Street described the matter as closed. Prime Minister Macmillan and Cabinet colleagues took Profumo at his word, but opposition MPs and newspapers remained sceptical. On June 4 1963, after a welter of rumour, accusation and denial that rocked the Government, Profumo, known as Jack, was forced to resign when osteopath and man-about-town Dr Stephen Ward was arrested and charged with living on immoral earnings.

It was Ward, an artist and son of a country parson, who in 1961 took Keeler to Lord Astor’s country home at Cliveden, Berkshire, where Profumo first set eyes on the doe-eyed brunette climbing nude from the swimming pool. She was 19 and he was 48, married to the beautiful Valerie Hobson, star of classic Ealing comedies such as Kind Hearts And Coronets. Mandy Rice-Davies – Achieved Notoriety During The Profumo Affair In 1963 In Westminster and in Fleet Street, the talk was about little else for six months. By 1963, the Conservatives had been in power for 12 years. The Daily Mirror asked: “What the hell is going on in this country?” Even the broadsheets condemned the “moral collapse” of the Tories. It was a time when the Cold War was at its most tense (the Cuban Missile Crisis had just been averted in October 1962) and the United States looked on in disbelief: a rising star of the British government had a mistress who was also sleeping with a Russian spy. Profumo became an international, as well as a national, scandal.

A scandal on which two films (The Keeler Affair in 1964 and Scandal in 1989) have been based (the first was banned from British cinema screens) and many books have been written. 3 June 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the resignation of the Conservative War Minister John Profumo. John Profumo. Profumo came from a Sardinian family who emigrated to Britain in 1885 and built their fortunes on insurance. His father was an Italian baron and a King’s Counsel. John was born in 1915 and brought up as an English gentleman. From Harrow he went to Oxford. He joined the Army in 1939 and ended the war as a brigadier, just the right background for a Tory MP. He entered the Commons at only 25, winning Kettering at a by-election in 1940, to become the youngest MP in the House. He was handsome, smooth, slightly balding and highly attractive to women. After the war he lost his seat, but got back into Parliament in 1950 as MP for Stratford-upon-Avon.

Two years later he was in government office, as Joint Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Transport. Ever ascending, Prime Minister Macmillan made him Secretary of State for War in July 1960 with a brief to boost Army recruitment following the end of conscription. He made a success of it. It appeared as if nothing could stand in the way of Profumo’s ambition to be foreign secretary. He was even tipped as a future prime minister. John Profumo met 20-year-old dancer and model Christine Keeler in 1961. He was staying at Cliveden House, the Berkshire country estate of a friend, Dr Stephen Ward, a London osteopath. She was having a party at a cottage in the grounds. When the married politician first saw the young model, 27 years his junior, she was climbing naked out of a swimming pool. Rumours of the affair which followed did reach the press. Stories were written. But when it was discovered the mistress of the war minister was also sharing a bed with Russian spy Yevgeny Ivanov, the scandal reached new heights in Cold War Britain. The involvement of the Russian was seen as a potentially serious threat to national security.

Newspapers, to whom Keeler sold her story, held back from publishing details. But gossip circulated in Westminster and Fleet Street, not only about the War Minister and Keeler, but linking other prominent Tory politicians with call-girls and sex orgies. The affair became public by a grapevine of rumour that got considerably bigger all the time until the truth could be concealed no longer. It had all the alchemy of a TV soap opera with a glossary of High Society names, weekend house parties, call girls, MI5, and government ministers thrown in for good measure. The Macmillan Cabinet secretly feared Ward would exploit the publicity surrounding his trial to name other establishment figures involved in sexual scandal. Newspapers ran teasing stories about the War Minister performing his duties, next to items about Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies. Profumo lied to Parliament. In March 1963, he told MPs there was “no impropriety whatsoever” in his relationship with Ms Keeler. The press gossip didn’t stop. Labour leader Harold Wilson smelled blood. Less than three months later, John Profumo admitted his deception and resigned. Dr Stephen Ward pictured in 1963.

The story did not begin to break until the jealous Edgecombe went after Keeler and opened up with a revolver outside Ward’s home where she was staying. Police involvement revealed for the first time the seedy tale of prostitution, espionage and deceit. The Profumo affair rocked the Tory establishment to the roots during the final months of the Macmillan administration, when he was sick and Labour – under its new leader Harold Wilson – was smelling blood. The rumours surrounding the case, including one that a Conservative minister attended an orgy wearing only a maid’s frilly apron and a mask, led to an inquiry by Lord Denning, the Master of the Rolls. He found all the rumours to be untrue. The Denning report became one of the hottest-selling Government publications ever but was widely viewed as an example of the Establishment closing ranks. Ward committed suicide after being found guilty on some, but not all, charges. In the end the seediness of the Profumo affair proved fatal to 13 years of unbroken Tory rule. Before the year was out, Mr Macmillan resigned as prime minister and was replaced by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who lost the general election. Profumo suffered scandal without reply.

The summer he fell, he made a vow of silence and never opened his mouth again to answer any criticism or misrepresentation, however unfair. The only time he spoke of it was to his son David who produced the memoir Bringing The House Down. Profumo served penance for parliamentary dishonour with more than 30 years of charity work among the poor in the East End of London. Friends believe he more than made up for the ruin he brought on a brilliant political career. In 1975 he came in from the cold with a CBE for his work at Toynbee Hall, the East End settlement where he began the long road to rehabilitation washing dishes and helping meths drinkers. Profumo’s wife’s death was a terrible blow to him, but he carried on his work as best he could. In 2003, the 40th anniversary of the Profumo scandal, all-party efforts were made in the Commons to restore his Privy Counsellorship. Profumo died in hospital on March 9 2006 after a stroke. To understand the significance of the events which led up to the resignation in June 1963 is to appreciate the cultural and political change it had on Britain.

The country was gripped by the story because Britain was also gripped by a social revolution. The Sixties were swinging. The ruling classes were not. But now, for the first time, people had in their tabloid newspapers a view through the bedroom window of the establishment. The old order was giving way to a new, more liberal society – a process in which the hungry press was a very willing participant. Previously, editors had been largely respectful of the ruling elite. Now they were happy to uncover their misdemeanors. For the first time newspaper readers were given a tantalising glimpse of the double lives led by those they had hitherto respected. Never before had mistresses and ministers been written about in the same story. Just who was the real villain, Ward, or the privileged few with a high society lifestyle? *End* Denning Report - British Pathé British Pathé Description London. GV. Whitehall. AS. Name "Treasury" over doorway. SV. & GV. Interior, Lord Alfred Thompson Denning, Master of the Rolls, sitting at his desk writing his report on Profumo affair. CU. Lord Denning. CU. A copy of Lord Denning's report on table. LV.

Exterior, people queuing up outside HM Stationery Office at midnight waiting for the doors to open. CU. Man waiting. LV. Crowds waiting outside the gates. SCU. Man opens the gates and the crowds start to rush in. CU. Crowds trying to force their way in through gates. CU. Cameraman holding his camera high to get elevated shot. SV. People entering the stationery office, one man shielding his face with his hands. LV. Sign 'Read in Full Lord Denning's Report'. CU. Man shielding his face with his hand. SV. Official places on table a large packet of unwrapped reports. CU. Notice on package "Not to be opened until 00.30 Thursday 26th September". LV. & CU. Men queuing up inside, waiting for reports. CU. Large stack of Denning Reports, pan to man receiving one. CU. Cash register tilling up 7/6d. GTV. Mass of people fighting for their copies of the Denning Report. SV. Man receiving about three copies. CU. Man receiving copy, pan to large pile of reports alongside cash register. CU.

Cash register, 15/0d, pan down money being put into till. SV. Group of press photographers. CU. Elderly man with bowler hat. CU. Hand picks up four copies of the report, pan up to man in bowler hat. GV. The Daily Mail printing press at work, printing copies of the Denning Report in the Daily Mail. SV. & CU. Papers being printed. CU. Man picks out paper from the press and checks the front page. CU. Newspaper showing headlines "Denning Verdict". SV. Exterior, newspaper placards on the Denning Report. CU. Newspaper placard "The Denning Report". CU. Sign outside shop "Denning Report Just Out". SV. Pan, people going into HM Stationery Office at 8 am. Side view, people buying their Denning Reports over the counter. SV. Member of staff leaning on pile of reports, board at the back of people. SV. Man outside shop wearing bowler hat and carrying umbrella reading a copy of the report. SV. & SCU. Another man coming out of Smith's bookshop, he stops and starts to read his copy. AS. Exterior, restaurant. SV.

Interior of restaurant with couple seated at table - gag sequence, natural sound. Elderly man and attractive young woman are ordering food. The man says to waiter: "We are absolutely in the clear, aren't we darling?" They raise glasses, cheer and take a sip. Tags Sex, drugs and spies: the Profumo Affair had it all Sex, drugs and spies: the Profumo Affair had it all Sinead O'Carroll Pin it Share This piece was first published on 24 March 2013. We republish it here following the news of Mandy Rice-Davies death. DALLIANCES WITH CALL girls, extramarital affairs and embarrassing misunderstandings with social networks are the norm of present-day political sex scandals. They are far from sexy, mysterious or compelling. Anthony Weiner is caught with his pants down. He resigns. Eliot Spitzer has a fondness for “high-end escorts”. He resigns. We all move on, slightly more fatigued by the old-boys’ club that politics continues to be despite our best protestations.

Although they’ve aired enough dirty linen in public, the likes of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Silvio Berlusconi, provide no intrigue with their antics. They are just another pair of ageing politicians caught out either by modern-day surveillance, their stupidity or an erroneous perception of their own infallibility. Fifty-one years ago, another middle-aged politician believed he could lie to an entire nation about his private relationships. And what followed was a controversy that had it all: the Cold War, a powerful Minister, a Russian spy, two young working-class girls and a photo that defined a decade. Eventually given the title ‘The Profumo Affair’, the political and intelligence scandal not only captured the imagination of the public for months – no, years – it also brought down a government and gave 20th century Britain some unlikely heroines.

Secretary of State, John Profumo (Image: S&G/S&G Barratts/EMPICS Archive) Harold MacMillan, Prime Minister (Image: S&G/S&G Barratts/EMPICS Archive) Christine Keeler, model, dancer and hostess (Image: PA/PA Archive/Press Association Images) Mandy Rice-Davies, model, dancer and hostess Dr Stephen Ward, osteopath and socialite With (clockwise from top right) Christine Keeler, Paula Hamilton-Marshall and Mandy Rice-Davies. Yevgeny Ivanov, Russian attaché and Keeler’s friend/lover (Image: Topham/Topham Picturepoint/Press Association Images) Lord Denning, master of the rolls (Image: AP/AP/Press Association Images) A Timeline On 8 July 1961, British Secretary of State for War John Profumo was introduced to 19-year-old London model and dancer Christine Keeler by Dr Stephen Ward, an osteopath and man-about-town. Ward and Keeler had met at Murray’s Cabaret Club in Soho, where she worked and he socialised.

The summer’s day party, which was also attended by Russian military attaché Yevgeny Ivanov, was hosted by Ward at the Cliveden mansion of Lord Astor. According to a new book on the subject, the Minister was taken with the London teen once he saw her in the swimming pool (there are reports she was completely nude). He procured her number from Ward and their affair started. Ivanov’s position in the threesome is less clear. Some called him Keeler’s friend, others her lover. But is is an established fact that they slept together. MI5′s belief that the Russian attaché was double-jobbing as a spy set off alarm bells among authorities once they got a whiff of the love triangle. Even a rumour that two men – one on the Soviet side and one in the British government – shared a lover during the Cold War was enough to spark a major scandal. But more concrete evidence was required before anything would be made public. Read More In stepped another lover. The bizarre events of 1963 were precipitated by a gunshot fired by drug dealer Johnny Edgecombe just before Christmas 1962.

Keeler had ended her relationship with Edgecombe in mid-December and he was not happy about it. She had sought out Ward and Mandy Rice-Davies for support and was in their Marylebone flat when Edgecombe sought her out one afternoon. When she refused to see him, he fired several shots at the locked door. The incident gave the newspapers of the day an opportunity to dig deeper into Keeler’s affairs – in both senses of the word. The relationship between Profumo and Keeler had ended on the advice of the head of MI5 but when she failed to turn up for Edgecombe’s trial for the gunshot incident, the details of the affair became public. Newspapers asked about her Russian connections and how she was allowed to disappear from a trial. Her links to the nation’s Secretary of State for War were also uncovered. In March 1963, when he could avoid the queries no longer, Profumo told Parliament that there was “no impropriety whatsoever” in his relationship with Keeler. The lie didn’t last long.

Evidence of the affair grew as the media’s interest in the story failed to abate (again, it had a minister, a spy, a pimp in Dr Ward and at the time, Keeler and Rice-Davies were referred to as ‘good time girls’ or call girls: not something Fleet Street was going to give up on). One-time friend Stephen Ward also challenged his denials as he fought off accusations that he lived off immoral earnings. Just 10 weeks after his initial statement, Profumo offered his resignation, admitting with “deep remorse” that he had deceived the House of Commons. But it didn’t end there – for anyone involved. Christine Keeler (Image: AP/Press Association Images) Keeler was 22 years old when she became “the reason” (source: Press Association photo caption) Profumo had to resign on 5 June 1963. As well as giving evidence in the trial of Dr Stephen Ward – a man she maintained she had a brother/sister relationship with, rather than pimp/call girl allegiance as many claimed – she was herself tried and convicted of perjury and conspiracy. She spent nine months in Holloway prison. On being released, her life spiralled somewhat.

Keeping her distance from Rice-Davies, who was garnering much attention in the subsequent months for her wry answers to legal queries during court proceedings, Keeler didn’t immediately cash-in on the fame. She was divorced twice and lived a life of poverty in public housing projects. However, there was one thing from her past that changed her life. The famous shot of her, as a young woman, straddling a chair naked was taken as a publicity shot for a planned film about the events of the early 1960s. But before the project got off the ground, one of the prints was stolen and published by the Sunday Mirror. According to the National Portrait Gallery, which now owns the rights, the photograph has become one of the defining images of the 1960s. A combination of pin-up and icon, suggestive both of sexual liberation and at the same time of the penalties of sexual exploitation, it occupies a morally ambiguous universe. It was taken in May 1963, when Christine Keeler came to Lewis Morley’s studio over the Establishment Club in Greek Street to be photographed to promote a film on the Profumo Affair.

In 2001, Keeler published an autobiography and, more recently, she released some daring images from her personal collection for exhibition. She is now 71 years old. John Profumo Profumo and his wife Valerie Robson in 1959. (Image: PA/PA Wire/Press Association Images) In 1961 and at 46 years of age, Profumo was a rising star of the Macmillan administration. Just two years later, he withdrew from all aspects of political life because of the affair. After his resignation in June 1963, he began to work as a volunteer cleaner at Toynbee Hall, a charity in London’s east end. That decision would eventually lead him down a path that would rectify his image in the eyes of all those who saw him as a ruined politician. He remained with his wife Valerie Hobson and dedicated his life to philanthropy. According to his obituary in the Daily Telegraph , he became known, in the last 40 years of his life, as a “tireless worker for charity and as a man who bore his humiliations with enormous dignity and personal integrity”.

Profumo’s story is of a man who made one terrible mistake but sought his own redemption in a way which has no precedent in public life either before or since. His dedication to the group earned him praise from Margaret Thatcher, who called him a “national hero”, and he continued his friendship with the Queen Mother and Clarence House. When the film Scandal came out in 1989, they were due to be guests at a dinner for the Queen Mother and they offered not to accept the invitation, but she insisted on their attendance. Although friends said he never got over the shame of the affair, his life panned out better than others involved in the sordid episode. He was appointed CBE in 1975. His wife Valerie died in 1998 and he passed away 9 March 2006, aged 91. They were survived by one son, David. Dr Stephen Ward (Image: General/Topham Picturepoint/Press Association Images) Dr Ward is often seen as the scape-goat to the whole sorry affair. It is understood the osteopath was cooperating with MI5 to entrap Ivanov but the Profumo connection confused matters.

When Profumo and Keeler’s liaison became public, he was embroiled in a trial, accused of living off the profits of prostitution or, put more eloquently, “immoral earnings”. On the last day of the trial, knowing a guilty verdict would be returned, he overdosed on sleeping tablets and was taken to hospital where he died a few days later. As he lay in a coma, the jury delivered the expected result for the charge that he lived off earnings made by Keeler and Rice-Davies. However, he was acquitted of accusations of procuring (or being a pimp). Lord Denning’s report into the Profumo affair also pointed the finger at Ward but insisted national security had not been compromised. People queued to buy a copy of the publication when it was released. The Guardian reported most were looking for “juicy bits”, such as the identity of a man who, naked except for a mask, served at Ward’s dinner parties. Harold Macmillan Less than a month after the publication of the Denning Report, which criticised the government’s handling of the affair, the prime minister resigned.

He said it was because of ill health but the public and media decided on a different truth – that young Christine Keeler had brought down the long-standing Conservative government. Mandy Rice-Davies Mandy Rice-Davies in 1980. (Image: PA/PA Archive/Press Association Images) For years after Ward’s trial, Rice-Davies made the most of her celebrity status. A Private Eye magazine cover from July 1963 sums up her attitude: Peter Rachman, the man referenced on the front page, was her ex-lover. He became notorious in London for exploiting tenants in the Notting Hill area. Shortly after Ward’s trial, Rice-Davies converted to Judaism and married an Israeli entrepreneur. They opened a number of nightclubs in Tel Aviv, calling them Mandy’s, Mandy’s Candies and Mandy’s Singing Bamboo. She also became a semi-permanent feature on the British chat-show scene and has appeared a number of times on television shows, including Absolutely Fabulous. “Slowly but surely. I’m changing notoriety into fame,” she told People magazine in 1986 on the release of her first novel.

The quotes “I was the toothpaste.” – Keeler on how Peter Rachman saw sex as being as functional as cleaning one’s teeth. “Surely there must be some way of concealing your penis.” – Profumo’s wife on his tight trousers. “He would, wouldn’t he?” – Rice-Davies on Lord Astor’s denial that he had an affair with her. “I was determined that no British government should be brought down by the action of two tarts.” – Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister “‘Oh what have you done?’ said Christine. / You’ve disrupted the Party machine; / To lie in the nude is not very rude, / But to lie in the House is obscene.” – a popular limerick which did the rounds at the time of the scandal. In pop culture A composite image showing actress Joanna Whalley-Kilmer (left) portraying model Christine Keeler (right) in the film Scandal, about the controversial Profumo Affair of 1963.

(Image: PA/PA Archive/Press Association Images) Christine Keeler, left, and actress Bridget Fonda (who played Rice-Davies) pictured at Stringfellow’s for the New York premier of the film on 26 April 1989. Fonda (Image: Mario Suriani/AP/Press Association Images) The cast perform on stage during a photocall for ‘Keeler’, the inside story of the Profumo affair, based on ‘The Truth At Last’ by Christine Keeler at Upstairs At The Gatehouse, Highgate Village, 12 February 2007. (Image: Alma Robinson/EMPICS Entertainment) That photo, recreated. (Image: Alma Robinson/EMPICS Entertainment) Profumo affair 50 years on and the top 15 political sex scandals - Mirror Online Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email Britain's most sensational sex and security scandal is 50 years old today. It is half a century since John Profumo, Secretary of State for War, lied in the House of Commons about having an affair with call girl Christine Keeler.

The denial resulted in the exposure of a searing story of sex, suicide, intrigue and espionage - and demolished Profumo's world of red-leather despatch boxes, scrambler telephones and the panoply of a Minister of the Crown. He began 1963 as Secretary of State for War. He was a rising star of the Tory Party, close to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, a favoured visitor at Buckingham Palace, a war hero and the dashing husband of a famous film star. Then, seven shots fired at a house in a quiet Marylebone mews by a jilted boyfriend of Christine Keeler triggered Britain's most notorious political sex scandal of modern times. The Profumo affair convulsed Westminster for nearly six months. Macmillan's Cabinet was shaken by Keeler's revelations that she had sex with both Profumo and Commander Eugene Ivanov, a handsome Russian intelligence officer and the Soviet assistant naval attache in London. At the height of the crisis, Cabinet ministers feared some of their colleagues might become the targets for scandal-mongers.

Fallout: The affair left Profumo's career, and the government, in tatters (Photo: Getty) There were tales of organised orgies, including whipping parties at a house in Mayfair where, it was said, one of the guests became over-excited and died of a heart attack. On March 22 1963, battered by parliamentary gossip, Profumo delivered a personal statement to MPs denying any "impropriety whatsoever" in his relationship with Keeler. His claim that a platonic affair had ended in 1961 was accepted by the Cabinet. Downing Street described the matter as closed. Prime Minister Macmillan and Cabinet colleagues took Profumo at his word, but opposition MPs and newspapers remained sceptical. On June 4 1963, after a welter of rumour, accusation and denial that rocked the Government, Profumo, known as Jack, was forced to resign when osteopath and man-about-town Dr Stephen Ward was arrested and charged with living on immoral earnings.

It was Ward, an artist and son of a country parson, who in 1961 took Keeler to Lord Astor's country home at Cliveden, Berkshire, where Profumo first set eyes on the doe-eyed brunette climbing nude from the swimming pool. She was 19 and he was 48, married to the beautiful Valerie Hobson, star of classic Ealing comedies such as Kind Hearts And Coronets. Happy couple: John Profumo and wife Valerie Hobson (Photo: PA) Ms Hobson, who loyally stood by her husband throughout this terrible personal crisis, died aged 83 in November 1998. Profumo came from a Sardinian family who emigrated to Britain in 1885 and built their fortunes on insurance. His father was an Italian baron and a King's Counsel. John was born in 1915 and brought up as an English gentleman. From Harrow he went to Oxford. He joined the Army in 1939 and ended the war as a brigadier, just the right background for a Tory MP.

He entered the Commons at only 25, winning Kettering at a by-election in 1940, to become the youngest MP in the House. He was handsome, smooth, slightly balding and highly attractive to women. After the war he lost his seat, but got back into Parliament in 1950 as MP for Stratford-upon-Avon. Two years later he was in government office, as Joint Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Transport. Ever ascending, Prime Minister Macmillan made him Secretary of State for War in July 1960 with a brief to boost Army recruitment following the end of conscription. He made a success of it. It appeared as if nothing could stand in the way of Profumo's ambition to be foreign secretary. He was even tipped as a future prime minister. Temptress: Christine Keeler (R) with Mandy Rice-Davies (Photo: PA) Their affair was as brief as it was casual. It might have ended without public knowledge, but for a bizarre set of circumstances. Keeler was also sleeping with Ivanov, whom she met through Ward, and with a West Indian petty criminal called Johnny Edgecombe.

Ward, who had many Tory MPs among his patients, was alleged to be the central figure in a "top people's" vice ring. The involvement of the Russian was seen as a potentially serious threat to national security. Newspapers, to whom Keeler sold her story, held back from publishing details. But gossip circulated in Westminster and Fleet Street, not only about the War Minister and Keeler, but linking other prominent Tory politicians with call-girls and sex orgies. The affair became public by a grapevine of rumour that got considerably bigger all the time until the truth could be concealed no longer. It had all the alchemy of a TV soap opera with a glossary of High Society names, weekend house parties, call girls, MI5, and government ministers thrown in for good measure. The Macmillan Cabinet secretly feared Ward would exploit the publicity surrounding his trial to name other establishment figures involved in sexual scandal. Newspapers ran teasing stories about the War Minister performing his duties, next to items about Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies.

Paparazzi scrum: Christine Keeler with friend Mandy Rice-Davies (Photo: Getty) The story did not begin to break until the jealous Edgecombe went after Keeler and opened up with a revolver outside Ward's home where she was staying. Police involvement revealed for the first time the seedy tale of prostitution, espionage and deceit. The Profumo affair rocked the Tory establishment to the roots during the final months of the Macmillan administration, when he was sick and Labour - under its new leader Harold Wilson - was smelling blood. The rumours surrounding the case, including one that a Conservative minister attended an orgy wearing only a maid's frilly apron and a mask, led to an inquiry by Lord Denning, the Master of the Rolls. He found all the rumours to be untrue. The Denning report became one of the hottest-selling Government publications ever but was widely viewed as an example of the Establishment closing ranks. Ward committed suicide after being found guilty on some, but not all, charges. In the end the seediness of the Profumo affair proved fatal to 13 years of unbroken Tory rule.

Before the year was out, Mr Macmillan resigned as prime minister and was replaced by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who lost the general election. Profumo suffered scandal without reply. The summer he fell, he made a vow of silence and never opened his mouth again to answer any criticism or misrepresentation, however unfair. The only time he spoke of it was to his son David who produced the memoir Bringing The House Down. Profumo served penance for parliamentary dishonour with more than 30 years of charity work among the poor in the East End of London. Friends believe he more than made up for the ruin he brought on a brilliant political career. In 1975 he came in from the cold with a CBE for his work at Toynbee Hall, the East End settlement where he began the long road to rehabilitation washing dishes and helping meths drinkers. Profumo's wife's death was a terrible blow to him, but he carried on his work as best he could. In 2003, the 40th anniversary of the Profumo scandal, all-party efforts were made in the Commons to restore his Privy Counsellorship.

Profumo died in hospital on March 9 2006 after a stroke. Most Read Most Recent Most Read Most Recent The Profumo Affair by Terry Johnson 2nd October The Profumo Affair by Terry Johnson Todayï¿½s speaker was Terry Johnson, Terry retired from The Metropolitan Police in the rank of Superintendent, during his service he was attached to New Scotland Yardï¿½s Anti-Corruption Squad. He was also Police Controller of both Chelsea and Fulham Football Grounds and one of the Yardï¿½s hostage negotiators. Terry Johnson left with our Clubï¿½s President John Mills Terry started by explaining that as most Probus members lived through the period of the scandal he would cover this from another aspect rarely mention in the press at that time of the 1960s he also was a young officer in this time slot. Terry gave some detailed and personal views of the situation in a rapid and yet humorous style, much of which in such rapid presentation of which this brief report can hardly do credit, but for those with short memories the following is the basis derived from the press of those days, with vivid and detailed impressions from Terry.

The relationship between Conservative Secretary of State for War John Profumo, and Christine Keeler shocked the nation in the early 1960s. A photograph of Keeler, naked across a chair, has even become an iconic image. At the height of the Cold War, the fact Keeler had also slept with Eugene Ivanov, a naval attachï¿½ at the Soviet Embassy, was political dynamite. It was enough to force the resignation of Profumo, who was felt to have compromised British security. However, there was more to the story than initially met the eye as Terry outlined later. John Profumo was a charming and respected Tory politician who was educated at Harrow and Oxford. As well as being a rising star in Macmillan's Conservative government, he was married to the movie actress Valerie Hobson and moved in sophisticated London circles. The wild-living Christine Keeler had run away from home at the age of 16 and become a showgirl at Murray's cabaret club in Soho where, as she put it, she was employed to show kinky Cleopatra-style costumes with gold and feathers but much more bare flesh!. This was where she befriended another showgirl, Mandy Rice-Davies.

Keeler, a strikingly beautiful young woman, also befriended Stephen Ward, a fashionable London osteopath who enjoyed sketching the rich and famous. Ward introduced Keeler, a beautiful, but impressionable teenager, into a world which she had never before encountered. A world peopled with the rich and famous, aristocratic, charming and powerful men, all eager to meet her and take her out. Keeler lived the high-life, but her attractiveness to men would ultimately lead her down a dangerous path. Keeler cohabited with Ward at his Wimpole Mews flat. The well-connected doctor had a fondness for art and liked to surround himself with beautiful women. He liked to throw sex parties, which were attended by high-ranking and influential members of the establishment. Keeler had a tempestuous relationship with Ward. She often ran away, but always came back and seems to have placed all her trust in him. Ward courted the prominent and the powerful and made friends easily. In fact, Roger Hollis, the then head of MI5, was said to be a frequent visitor to his flat.

Ward was also known for introducing women to men and there are lurid stories told of parties held at his home, involving two-way mirrors, sado-masochism and orgies. The most infamous tale is that of the "man in the mask", a high-ranking member of the establishment. He would serve guests at Ward's dinner parties, naked, except for a mask and eat his dinner from a dog bowl. Despite rumors he was a Cabinet minister, he has never been identified. Keeler and Ward often spent weekends at a cottage belonging to one of Ward's friends, Lord Astor. It was at a party at Lord Astor's Cliveden country residence in Berkshire in 1961 that Keeler and Profumo first met. According to Keeler, they flirted around the swimming pool and jokingly tried on suits of amour in the rooms of the mansion. The War minister was smitten and the couple subsequently had a passionate affair. Keeler often visited Profumo home and his offices, but their affair was only brief.

It would probably never have come to light were it not for a few complications in Keeler's love life - namely, that she had also slept with Ivanov, a solemn and patriotic Muscovite who was a spy. According to Keeler, Ivanov received information and documents stolen by Ward and passed them onto his spy chiefs in Moscow. When the story broke in 1962, Profumo initially tried to deny the affair, but his efforts were futile. Terry suggested that the Political Establishment attempted to divert the press attention by high ranking personnel lead by Maurice Harold Macmillan, who was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963, Macmillan nicknamed 'Supermac' and known for his rapporteur, achieved note before the Second World War as a Tory radical and critic of appeasement.

Rising to high office as a protï¿½gï¿½ of the wartime Prime Minister, he believed in the post-war settlement and the necessity of a mixed economy, and in his premiership pursued corporatist policies to develop the domestic market as the engine of growth, but his Cabinet was formed mainly by Public Schools pupils such at Eton and Harrow or by family/marriage members It was using the ploy of having a scapegoat and Stephen Ward the ï¿½big brotherï¿½ of the girls was identified and indeed set-up but the press was not having this and hounded Profumo crying for blood the tantalising smell of sex, spies and scandal was out. In March 1963, he made the crucial mistake of lying in the House of Commons about it, telling the chamber: "Miss Keeler and I were on friendly terms. There was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintanceship with Miss Keeler." However, ten weeks later he appeared before MPs again to say "with deep remorse" that he had misled the House because he wanted to protect his wife and family, and that he would resign.

As Terry stated the security implications ran deep enough to destroy the career of a man being groomed for Number 10 also Keeler's relationships with Ivanov, Ward and Profumo, also attracted the attentions of the USA during a trip to America agents followed Keeler and Rice-Davies. The FBI kept copious dossiers on their relationship. When the Profumo Affair became public, Ward was charged with living on the immoral earnings Ward was prosecuted but committed suicide on the very last day of the trial, before the jury reached their verdict. At Ward's trial, the prosecution alleged Mandy Rice-Davies had received money from Lord Astor in return for sex when she was told Lord Astor had denied ever sleeping with her, she uttered the immortal line: "He would, wouldn't he?" More than this, she claims Ward and herself was used as a smokescreen by the establishment, who wanted the media to focus on the racier aspects of the story in order to cover up a serious breach of British security. The government ordered an official report into the scandal from Lord Denning, then Master of the Rolls, on September 25, 1963.

Shortly after this, the Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, resigned, his ill health exacerbated by the scandal. Terry gave more in depth details of this report and hinted that the whole procedure was a white wash especially as Denningï¿½s papers in the Kew Archives are marked to remain closed until 2043, he jokingly suggested he will come back to read the truth! And referred to and circulated the ï¿½Mandy Reportï¿½ as her riposte to the affair, recalling one depraved Bayswater orgy, Mandy wrote ï¿½All the men were naked, the women naked except for wisps of clothing like suspender belts and stockings. ï¿½Unfortunately, I recognised a fair number of faces as belonging to people a Harley Street gynecologist, several politicians, including a cabinet minister of the day. The roast dinner was served by an individual wearing only a mask and bow-tie. But in the same report she stated was also sexually active at an early age.

Of a relationship with a man five years her senior, she recalled: ï¿½I was an enthusiastic participant in what struck me as a perfectly pleasant way to spend an afternoon.ï¿½ Terry finished his breathtaking presentation by bring us up to date with the recent Daily Telegraph report of the principle player in the Scandal John Profumo kept a low profile since the sensational events of the 1960s, mainly occupying himself with charity work. He was appointed CBE in 1975 for his charitable work. After the scandal broke, the Naval attachï¿½ Ivanov was called back to Moscow and never heard from again. Keeler lives quietly in North London on benefits, and says she still feels "bewildered" by what happened, Rice-Davies is a grandmother (recent above) married an Israeli businessman - one of three husbands - and opened a string of businesses in Tel Aviv and currently lives in leafy Virginia Waters. The vote of thanks by Peter Stoddart an ex police Officer extended the Club's thanks for a graphic insight into a complex scandal which was much appreciated by the membership.

Peter mentioned his various police posting did not enter the Keeler/Rice-Davies league but his scandals covered Clapham Common after dark!! Profumo affair 50 years on and the top 15 political sex scandals - Mirror Online Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email Britain's most sensational sex and security scandal is 50 years old today. It is half a century since John Profumo, Secretary of State for War, resigned from Parliament after he was found to have lied in the House of Commons about having an affair with call girl Christine Keeler. The denial resulted in the exposure of a searing story of sex, suicide, intrigue and espionage - and demolished Profumo's world of red-leather despatch boxes, scrambler telephones and the panoply of a Minister of the Crown. He began 1963 as Secretary of State for War. He was a rising star of the Tory Party, close to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, a favoured visitor at Buckingham Palace, a war hero and the dashing husband of a famous film star.

Then, seven shots fired at a house in a quiet Marylebone mews by a jilted boyfriend of Christine Keeler triggered Britain's most notorious political sex scandal of modern times. The Profumo affair convulsed Westminster for nearly six months. Macmillan's Cabinet was shaken by Keeler's revelations that she had sex with both Profumo and Commander Eugene Ivanov, a handsome Russian intelligence officer and the Soviet assistant naval attache in London. At the height of the crisis, Cabinet ministers feared some of their colleagues might become the targets for scandal-mongers. (Photo: Getty) There were tales of organised orgies, including whipping parties at a house in Mayfair where, it was said, one of the guests became over-excited and died of a heart attack. On March 22 1963, battered by parliamentary gossip, Profumo delivered a personal statement to MPs denying any "impropriety whatsoever" in his relationship with Keeler. His claim that a platonic affair had ended in 1961 was accepted by the Cabinet. Downing Street described the matter as closed. Prime Minister Macmillan and Cabinet colleagues took Profumo at his word, but opposition MPs and newspapers remained sceptical.

On June 4 1963, after a welter of rumour, accusation and denial that rocked the Government, Profumo, known as Jack, was forced to resign when osteopath and man-about-town Dr Stephen Ward was arrested and charged with living on immoral earnings. It was Ward, an artist and son of a country parson, who in 1961 took Keeler to Lord Astor's country home at Cliveden, Berkshire, where Profumo first set eyes on the doe-eyed brunette climbing nude from the swimming pool. She was 19 and he was 48, married to the beautiful Valerie Hobson, star of classic Ealing comedies such as Kind Hearts And Coronets. (Photo: PA) Ms Hobson, who loyally stood by her husband throughout this terrible personal crisis, died aged 83 in November 1998. Profumo came from a Sardinian family who emigrated to Britain in 1885 and built their fortunes on insurance. His father was an Italian baron and a King's Counsel. John was born in 1915 and brought up as an English gentleman. From Harrow he went to Oxford.

He joined the Army in 1939 and ended the war as a brigadier, just the right background for a Tory MP. He entered the Commons at only 25, winning Kettering at a by-election in 1940, to become the youngest MP in the House. He was handsome, smooth, slightly balding and highly attractive to women. After the war he lost his seat, but got back into Parliament in 1950 as MP for Stratford-upon-Avon. Two years later he was in government office, as Joint Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Transport. Ever ascending, Prime Minister Macmillan made him Secretary of State for War in July 1960 with a brief to boost Army recruitment following the end of conscription. He made a success of it. It appeared as if nothing could stand in the way of Profumo's ambition to be foreign secretary. He was even tipped as a future prime minister. (Photo: PA) Their affair was as brief as it was casual. It might have ended without public knowledge, but for a bizarre set of circumstances. Keeler was also sleeping with Ivanov, whom she met through Ward, and with a West Indian petty criminal called Johnny Edgecombe.

Ward, who had many Tory MPs among his patients, was alleged to be the central figure in a "top people's" vice ring. The involvement of the Russian was seen as a potentially serious threat to national security. Newspapers, to whom Keeler sold her story, held back from publishing details. But gossip circulated in Westminster and Fleet Street, not only about the War Minister and Keeler, but linking other prominent Tory politicians with call-girls and sex orgies. The affair became public by a grapevine of rumour that got considerably bigger all the time until the truth could be concealed no longer. It had all the alchemy of a TV soap opera with a glossary of High Society names, weekend house parties, call girls, MI5, and government ministers thrown in for good measure. The Macmillan Cabinet secretly feared Ward would exploit the publicity surrounding his trial to name other establishment figures involved in sexual scandal. Newspapers ran teasing stories about the War Minister performing his duties, next to items about Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies. (Photo: Getty) The story did not begin to break until the jealous Edgecombe went after Keeler and opened up with a revolver outside Ward's home where she was staying.

Police involvement revealed for the first time the seedy tale of prostitution, espionage and deceit. The Profumo affair rocked the Tory establishment to the roots during the final months of the Macmillan administration, when he was sick and Labour - under its new leader Harold Wilson - was smelling blood. The rumours surrounding the case, including one that a Conservative minister attended an orgy wearing only a maid's frilly apron and a mask, led to an inquiry by Lord Denning, the Master of the Rolls. He found all the rumours to be untrue. The Denning report became one of the hottest-selling Government publications ever but was widely viewed as an example of the Establishment closing ranks. Ward committed suicide after being found guilty on some, but not all, charges. In the end the seediness of the Profumo affair proved fatal to 13 years of unbroken Tory rule. Before the year was out, Mr Macmillan resigned as prime minister and was replaced by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who lost the general election. Profumo suffered scandal without reply. The summer he fell, he made a vow of silence and never opened his mouth again to answer any criticism or misrepresentation, however unfair.

The only time he spoke of it was to his son David who produced the memoir Bringing The House Down. Profumo served penance for parliamentary dishonour with more than 30 years of charity work among the poor in the East End of London. Friends believe he more than made up for the ruin he brought on a brilliant political career. In 1975 he came in from the cold with a CBE for his work at Toynbee Hall, the East End settlement where he began the long road to rehabilitation washing dishes and helping meths drinkers. Profumo's wife's death was a terrible blow to him, but he carried on his work as best he could. In 2003, the 40th anniversary of the Profumo scandal, all-party efforts were made in the Commons to restore his Privy Counsellorship. Profumo died in hospital on March 9 2006 after a stroke.

Question: Which Master of the Rolls produced the 1963 report into the Profumo Affair?
Answer: LORD DENNING