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TINCT


prime minister regarded the matter as closed. They were soon to be re-briefed.


The rumours persisted. On June 5, Profumo resigned from the government and parliament with a statement admitting ‘with deep remorse’ that 10 weeks earlier he had lied to the Commons.


No more parties for him – nor for Russian diplomat Eugene Ivanov, with whom Keeler had been having an affair and who had been recalled to Moscow. For his subsequent public life at least, Profumo received considerable credit. As Lord Astor’s son


William, who was 10 at the time of the swimming- pool incident, put it much later: “The disgraced minister still sets an example, never surpassed by any subsequent politician, of how to behave with courage and dignity following a scandal.” Profumo turned to


charitable work, beginning a long stint at Toynbee Hall, an East End settlement, by washing dishes. My late wife, who was also


volunteering there, heard a puzzled local lad asking him over a communal meal why he wasn’t at the House of Commons. “I lied to parliament,” replied the former defence minister simply. Another young lad, a student rusticated after being involved in a very responsible protest, went to see him about a job at another charity in which Profumo was involved. Which was how Jon Snow, later of ITN and Channel 4, became director of the New Horizon Youth Centre for homeless young people. The happy conclusion to all this was


Profumo’s award of a CBE and a seat next to the


Queen at Margaret Thatcher’s 70th birthday party. For the socialite osteopath, it was a very different story. For a start, it came to an end in 1963. His fate can be summed up by the title of a book by Caroline Kennedy and Phillip Knightley, How the English Establishment Framed Stephen Ward.


He became convinced


that dark forces were out to get him because he knew too much – and they certainly got him.


On the grounds that the


young women had helped out with housekeeping expenses, he faced a charge of living on immoral earnings and found himself in court on June 10. Deserted by his socialite


friends, he was found in a coma before the eighth day of his trial, a bottle of sleeping tablets by his side. He died in hospital. Keeler was the source of a


lucrative kiss-and-tell feature in the News of the World. The Sunday Mirror matched this with a front-page headline of ‘Prince Philip and the Profumo scandal – rumour utterly unfounded’. This canard was later to quack in The Crown. Valerie Profumo stood by


her husband. Incredibly, the family skeleton was kept securely in the cupboard away from the young David Profumo – seven at the time – until a fellow pupil at Eton


recognised his surname. Decades later David, now a novelist and fishing correspondent of Country Life, produced what can claim to be the best book on this engrossing subject. “I feel that, a few years after his fall, [my


father] had pretty much forgiven himself for his sexual infidelity,” he wrote. Indeed, Profumo may well have carried on with it. His remorse was genuine but it was for lying to the Mother of Parliaments, not for lying to the mother of his child. Bringing the House Down was well reviewed.


“A beautifully crafted account,” enthused one reviewer. In the Standard.


theJournalist | 19


Looking back to:


1963


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