An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo (54 page)

Lord Denning at Waterloo Station, in high fettle at the publication of his infamous Report in September 1963. (Getty Images)

An envious crowd gawps as Christine Keeler followed by Paula Hamilton-Marshall leave their home to be tried for perjury in October 1963. (Getty Images)

Mandy Rice-Davies – jubilant, dauntless and ogled. She, more than Keeler, prospered in the decades that followed. (Mirrorpix)

The deposed leader in proud isolation: Harold Macmillan queuing for a taxi at Victoria Station in 1965. (Getty Images)

Footnotes

fn1
John Hamilton-Marshall was arrested in Paddington for a breaking-in offence in December 1967, rearrested while on remand in Stoke Newington in March 1968 in possession of stolen silver and charged with burglary, and then committed to a mental hospital because of drug addiction. He was part of a gang involved in stealing paintings from the dramatist Christopher Fry, silverware from the architectural historian Alec Clifton-Taylor, ceramics worth over £10,000 from Lady Mountbatten’s nephew Noel Cunningham-Reid, and other burglaries. The investigation led to the prosecution of a police officer for corruption and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Hamilton-Marshall committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in an open-backed truck in a wood near Winding Hill at Selling in Kent, in 1984, aged forty-three.

Notes

Overture

1
. Peter Forster, ‘Peeling the Politicians’,
Spectator
, 9 October 1959, p. 469; David Butler and Richard Rose,
The British General Election of 1959
(1960), p. 89.

2
. Richard Crossman,
Diaries of a Cabinet Minister,
III
(1977), pp. 206–07.

PART ONE: CAST

One: Prime Minister

1
. Crossbencher, ‘Macmillan prepares to go’,
Sunday Express
, 2 December 1956, p. 6; Lord Rawlinson of Ewell,
A Price Too High
(1989), pp. 71–2; Richard Cockett (ed.),
My
Dear Max: The Letters of Brendan Bracken to Lord Beaverbrook 1925
–
58
(1990), p. 199.

2
. Philip Williams (ed.),
The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell 1945
–
56
(1983), p. 450.

3
. D. R. Thorpe,
Supermac
(2010), pp. 53–8; Alistair Horne,
But What Do You Actually Do?
(2011), p. 262.

4
. Diary of Harold Macmillan, 1 and 10 November 1959, dep d 37, ff 60 and 66,
Bodleian Library.

5
. Mark DeWolfe Howe (ed.),
Holmes-Laski Letters
, I (1953), p. 676; Grover Smith (ed.),
Letters of Aldous Huxley
(1969), p. 379.

6
. Stuart Ball (ed.),
Parliament and Politics in the Age of Baldwin and MacDonald: The Headlam Diaries 1923
–
35
(1992), p. 296; ‘Harold Macmillan’,
National Review
, 150 (March 1958), p. 105; Earl of Swinton,
Sixty Years of Power
(1966), p. 175; Lord Egremont,
Wyndham and Children
First
(1968), p. 193.

7
. Stuart Ball (ed.),
Parliament and Politics in the Age of Churchill and Attlee: the Headlam Diaries 1935
–
51
(1999), p. 209; Egremont,
Wyndham and Children
, p. 193.

8
. John Barnes and David Nicholson (eds),
The Empire at Bay: the Leo Amery Diaries 1929–45
(1988), p. 846; Egremont,
Wyndham and Children
, p. 194.

9
. Sir Robert Rhodes James,
Bob Boothby
(1991), pp. 41, 126.

10
. Anthony Powell,
The Acceptance World
(1955), p. 171.

11
. Rhodes James,
Boothby
, pp. 118, 120.

12
. Charlotte Mosley (ed.),
In Tearing Haste
:
Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor
(2008), p. 52; Peter Catterall (ed.),
Macmillan Diaries
,
II
(2011), pp. 99, 182, 228.

13
. Harold Wilson, House of Commons debates, 17 June 1963, Vol. 679, col. 44.

14
. Robert Boothby to Lady Cynthia Mosley, 14 September 1932, Boothby papers M/689, quoted in Thorpe,
Supermac
, p. 97; Dorothy Macmillan to Nancy Astor, nd [January 1933] and Duchess of Devonshire to Nancy Astor, 24 January 1933, Astor 3748. On the Duchess, see Mark Girouard,
Enthusiasms
(2011), pp. 172–92.

15
. Harold Macmillan to Nancy Astor, nd [?31 January 1933], Astor 3748.

16
. Harold Macmillan to Nancy Astor, two letters dated 1 February 1933, and Duchess of Devonshire to Nancy Astor, 9 February 1933, Astor 3748.

17
. Horne,
But What Do You Actually Do?
, p. 256.

18
. Thorpe,
Supermac
, p. 363; information from Nicolas Barker, 21 December 2011; Sir Edward Heath,
The Course of My Life
(1998), p. 181; Alistair Horne,
Macmillan 1957–1986
(1989), p. 5.

19
. Thorpe,
Supermac
, p. 372; Catterall,
Macmillan Diaries
,
I
, p. 615.

20
. R. A. Butler, aide-memoire of 22 October 1957, Butler papers G31.

21
. Diary of Earl Winterton, 17 February 1919 and 15 May 1920, Winterton papers 22 and 25, Bodleian.

22
. R. A. Butler, aide-memoire of 24 January 1962, Butler papers G38; Swinton,
Sixty Years
, p. 187.

23
. Ian Harvey,
To Fall Like Lucifer
(1971), p. 82.

24
. Diary of Harold Macmillan, 14 December 1959, Macmillan dep d 37, f 91; Macmillan diary, 17 March 1957, Macmillan dep d 28, f 74, Bodleian; Catterall,
Macmillan Diaries
,
II
, p. 427; Roy Jenkins, ‘A Resounding Finale’,
Spectator
, 8 July 1960, p. 52.

25
. Diary of Harold Macmillan, 27 November 1959, Macmillan dep d 37, f 80, Bodleian; Tom Hopkinson, ‘Waiting for Lumumba’,
Twentieth Century
, 169 (January 1961), p. 8.

26
. Lord Boyd-Carpenter,
Way of Life
(1980), pp. 151–52.

27
. Catterall,
Macmillan Diaries
,
II
, p. 559; George Thomson, ‘Parties in Parliament 1959–63’,
Political Quarterly
, 34 (1963), p. 250.

28
. ‘The New Chancellor’,
National Review
, 150 (February 1958), pp. 51–2.

29
. ‘Lord Elliott of Morpeth’,
Daily Telegraph
, 23 May 2011; Charles Curran, ‘The Politics of Envy’,
Spectator
, 6 December 1957, p. 781.

30
. Lord Egremont,
Wyndham and Children
(1968), p. 161.

31
. Egremont,
Wyndham and Children
, p. 165; Patrick Gordon Walker, ‘On Being a Cabinet Minister’,
Encounter
, 6 (April 1956), p. 21.

32
. Kenneth Rose, ‘Official Residences’,
National Review
, 154 (April 1960), p. 125; Sir Brian Harrison,
Seeking a Role
(2009), p. 111; Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield,
Having It So Good
(2008), p. 542.

33
. Lord Altrincham, ‘Organised Hypocrisy’,
National Review
, 148 (February 1957), pp. 63–4; ‘Harold Macmillan’,
National Review
, 150 (March 1958), p. 104; ‘The Boothby Letter’,
Time & Tide
, 43 (15–22 November 1962), p. 35.