In the early 1960s, the “Profumo affair” engulfed Harold Macmillan’s government and has been credited with contributing to the Conservatives’ failure to win the 1964 general election.

It initially centred on the sexual relationship between the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, and a then little-known model named Christine Keeler, but it soon spiralled into a major scandal about Cold War espionage and government security.

The scandal forced Profumo out of office and out of parliament, precipitated Macmillan’s resignation, and led to the death of an osteopath who had introduced Profumo to Keeler. The affair had a colossal impact on the rest of Keeler’s life, and the effects of the scandal are still felt in Westminster today.

Who was Christine Keeler?

Christine Keeler was the woman at the centre of the scandal. At the time of the affair she was a 19-year-old model and showgirl.

Originally from Uxbridge, Middlesex, she was brought up by her mother and her mother’s partner who lived in two disused train carriages. When she was nine years old her school health inspector sent her to a holiday home because she was suffering from malnutrition. She was sexually abused as a teenager by her mother’s partner and his friends.

(Getty)

She found work as a model at a dress shop in Soho at the age of 15, and two years later gave birth to a son after a brief relationship with a US Air Force Sergeant. The child, born at home, was premature, and died six days later.

Later that year through an acquaintance Keeler got work at a cabaret club in Soho where she worked as a topless showgirl.

She was introduced to Profumo by osteopath and artist Stephen Ward, who had first met her himself in the club. Alongside his osteopathy business Ward was a successful artist and in 1960 was commissioned to make a series of portraits of members of the Royal Family.

After the Profumo affair Keeler was briefly married twice, and had two children. She published several accounts of the affair. In 2001 she claimed she had been pregnant with Profumo’s child and pressured into having an abortion, and after Profumo’s death in 2012, she released another revised edition with the strapline: “Now Profumo is dead I can finally reveal the truth”.

What was the Profumo affair?

Ward’s introduction between Profumo and Keeler took place at Cliveden, the house of Lord Astor, in 1961.

The pair then embarked on an affair – Profumo was married to the actress Valerie Hobson.

Subsequent meetings between Keeler and the MP took place at Ward’s home in Wimpole Mews in Marylebone. Ward was also the photographer who took a famous photograph of Keeler, who posed nude straddling a chair, and which was subsequently bought by the National Potrait Gallery. 

John Profumo and his wife Valerie Hobson in 1959 (PA)

In March 1963, after the affair had ended, Profumo denied any impropriety in a public statement to the House of Commons. But public interest increased when it was revealed that Keeler had also been linked to Soviet naval attaché Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, with whom she had also been having a sexual relationship.

Ward had also introduced them to one another. Ivanov was known to MI5 and with the possibility of a Profumo-Keeler-Ivanov love triangle emerging, questions over the possibility of a security risk arose.

Weeks after his initial denial, amid growing media clamour and the publication of stories that took a broad brush to MPs, civil servants and military personnel’s morals, Profumo confirmed he had lied in the Commons and then resigned from the government and from Parliament.

Actress and showgirl Christine Keeler (Getty) (Getty)

Ward was subsequently arrested and charged with immorality offences, while the press branded him as a likely Soviet agent due to his closeness with Ivanov.

He was charged with living off immoral earnings, however, before the trial’s verdict was announced, he took an overdose of sleeping pills and died three days later.

What was the impact of the affair?

The scandal ran through the summer of 1963, and in October, the night before the Conservative’s annual conference, Macmillan resigned as prime minister. The following year Labour’s Harold Wilson led the party to victory at the general election, with many commentators pointing out that the scandal had shaken the Conservative party and left it a considerably changed entity.

In December ’63, Keeler admitted perjury and was jailed for six months.

The scandal is also credited with catalysing a change in the relationship between the press and politicians, where a state of mistrust in figures of authority increasingly became the accepted norm.

The affair has been turned into a new BBC drama, The Trial of Christine Keeler, in which the story is told from Keeler’s point of view.

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