This Week in the Secret History: The Magickal Roots of "Swinging England"

Christine Keeler and the Famous Chair











The Profumo Affair...There has always been something about this story that begged the discovery, or invention, of an array of subtexts.

In 1963, British Secretary of War John Profumo and his wife, a retired movie actress, were very much at the center of "swinging London" society . One night in July 1961, Profumo was at the Cliveden estate of Lord "Bill" Astor when he was first introduced to 19-year-old Christine Keeler, frolicking naked by the Cliveden pool. Keeler was at Cliveden as a guest of Dr. Stephen Ward, a society osteopath who rented a cottage at the estate from his friend Lord Astor. Keeler, from an indigent background, was working as a showgirl at a London nightclub. Ward had taken Keeler under his wing, and they lived together in his London flat. He encouraged her to pursue sexual relationships with his upper-class friends. Ward introduced her to his friend Yevgeny "Eugene" Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache who some suspected was a spy, and she began a sexual relationship with the Soviet diplomat. Several weeks after meeting Profumo at Cliveden, she also began an affair with the war minister.

On March 21, 1963, Colonel George Wigg, a Labour MP, raised the issue in the House of Commons, inviting Profumo to affirm or deny the rumors of his improprieties. Profumo vehemently denied the charges. This defused the scandal for several weeks, but in May Stephen Ward went on trial on charges of prostituting Keeler and other young women. In the highly sensationalized trial, Keeler testified under oath about her relationship with Profumo. On June 5, Profumo resigned as war minister.

Prime Minister Macmillan was widely condemned as being old, out-of-touch, and incompetent. In October, he resigned under pressure from his own government. In the general election in 1964 the Conservatives were swept from power by Harold Wilson's Labour Party.

Stephen Ward committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. Christine Keeler was convicted of perjury in a related trial and began a prison sentence in December 1963. John Profumo left politics after his resignation and dedicated himself to philanthropy in the East End of London.

Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies on their way to court

And now about those subtexts...

American novelist R.V. Cassill, in his 1970 best-seller, Dr. Cobb's Game, makes Michael Cobb, the Stephen Ward character, not only a playboy and man about town, but a magician who is dedicated to bringing about a psychic rebirth of poor old shabby, war-broken England.The way he intends to do this is by...sex magic! Good old, Merry Old Pagan English sex magic of the D.H. Lawrence one with nature, feel your deep self variety. Cobb initiates Cecile Banner (Christine Keeler) into the erotic mysteries, then sends her out to gather a representative new England around her, including the creative and artistic, the successful, the marginalized, the very good, the very bad, the weak and the very powerful. This last includes Richard Derwent (John Profumo), England's Minister of War, whose potential to play Arthur to his Merlin particularly interests Dr. Cobb.

But then things start to go wrong. On the one hand the old gods become unruly, on the other the Establishment finally takes notice and bares its claws, looking for a scapegoat for the unholy mess Cobb and Derwent have unwittingly created. Caught between the two forces, Cobb takes his own life. And Cecile goes on to become the muse of Swinging England.

It is true that part of the fascination of the Profumo Affair for the general public is that it opened a window into an aristocratic netherworld of campy occult-tinged perversity, which is probably what suggested the whole scenario to Cassill.

On the grittier side, English investigative journalist Anthony Summers, author of Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, in his book Honeytrap, maintains that Stephen Ward was a British intelligence asset who was working with MI5 to turn Ivanov into a double agent by compromising him sexually. Of course, his suicide was no suicide; he was murdered by British intelligence, having become a liability when the whole affair blew up.

Interestingly, one idea that Cassill and Summers share is that Ward (like millions of others) was traumatized by the Cuban Missile Crisis, and was working desperately, through his vast web of contacts, to set up unofficial meetings between Soviet and British citizens to prevent another confrontation.

All of this was turned into a wonderful movie, Scandal (1989), with John Hurt as Stephen Ward, Ian McKellen as John Profumo, Bridget Fonda as Mandy Rice-Davies, and Joanne Whalley-Kilmer as Christine Keeler.

Here's a great clip from Scandal as Christine and Mandy apply warpaint to the tune of "Apache" by the Shadows.