Tom Mangold's inside story of the scandal that rocked Britain, showing what it was really like to live with Stephen Ward as he became the scapegoat for the Profumo affair.
Tells the story of the photographers who cemented the image of swinging London and who, through their pictures, irreversibly altered the face of fashion and pop.
In Summer 1961, at a party held on the Cliveden estate of Lord Astor, Minister for War John Profumo met, and subsequently had a brief affair with, a call-girl by the name of Christine Keeler, who had also been seeing a Soviet diplomat. The rumours circulated throughout the following year, but the Fourth Estate was less inclined in those days to disturb the privacy of those at the top of the tree. Eventually, the story made the papers, and Profumo made a statement to the Commons, denying impropriety over his relationship with Keeler. Three months later he was back, confessing that he had misled the House, and he resigned as an MP. But that was only the start of it.
Christine Margaret Keeler was an English model and showgirl. Her meeting at a dance-club with society osteopath Stephen Ward drew her into fashionable circles. At the height of the Cold War, she became sexually involved with a married government minister, John Profumo, as well as a Soviet diplomat.
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