What happened to Christine Keeler after the Profumo scandal? How former model's life remained 'cursed by sex'
Christine Keeler, whose affair with Tory Cabinet Minister John Profumo rocked British politics to its core, has died aged 75.
She was propelled into the spotlight at the age of 19, when she had an affair with both the Secretary of State for War and a Russian diplomat at the height of the Cold War.
Born in Uxbridge, Middlesex, Ms Keeler –who died away on Monday night after suffering from a lung condition for several months – was a cabaret dancer in Soho, London, when she met Stephen Ward, an osteopath, artist and “man about town”.
He introduced her to a party scene attended by aristocrats and VIPs.
Through him she met Profumo, 46, and the Russian military attache Yevgeny Ivanov in 1961, having affairs with both men.
In her book Truth At Last, published in 2001 and updated in 2012 as Secrets And Lies, Ms Keeler wrote: “My life has been cursed by sex I didn’t particularly want. [John] Profumo was all over me and there wasn’t much I could do about it.
“He was a much older man, not someone I wanted to be with, it just happened [John] had power too and that was part of it for me."
The affairs came to light in 1963, after Ms Keeler had a row with another lover, Johnny Edgecombe, in which police were called.
Profumo, married to actress Valerie Hobson, told the Commons there was no “impropriety”, amid fears of a Cold War security leak.
But he was forced to admit lying after more newspaper stories emerged, and resigned.
Before the year was out, Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan quit and was replaced by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who lost the general election.
Profumo suffered scandal without reply. He died after a stroke in 2006.
Ward was arrested and put on trial accused of pimping Keeler and her teenage pal Mandy Rice-Davies.
They always denied being prostitutes. Ward overdosed days later.
Describing Ms Keeler in a 2013 documentary, Miss Rice-Davies, who died the following year, said: “She was a free spirit and I’d never met anybody like Christine before.”
But the pair did not remain friends after the scandal, and in Secrets And Lies Ms Keeler wrote: “I thought [she] was a true tart.”
She revelled in her notoriety.
As well as two books, she sold her story to newspapers all over the world. Ms Keeler said of Ward: “He’s been portrayed... as an immoral rascal.
"In reality, Stephen Ward was a spymaster who befriended hosts of prominent and powerful people in the British government, aristocracy and even the Royal Family.
“With associates, he lured many of them into compromising situations.”
And she wrote of being photographed by Lewis Morley, straddling a chair: “I am always asked if I wore knickers.
"I certainly did, but it had been a battle to keep them on.”
Hinting at sadness, she also wrote: “Ever since the Profumo affair, I have never known if a man was capable of loving me for me and not for being Christine Keeler.
“I’ve survived and possibly I should not hope for more than that.”
In 2013, she was snapped in public for the first time in seven years, in what would also be the last public photographs of the former showgirl caught up in a scandal that shocked the Establishment to its core.
She went to ground in recent years and was said to be living in sheltered accommodation in South London.
Yesterday her son Seymour Platt, 46, who lives in Ireland, said he had last seen his mother a week before
Her death at the Princess Royal University Hospital in Farnborough, Hants.
She had suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
He added: “There was a lot of good around Chris’s rather tragic life, because there was a family around her that loved her.
“I think what happened to her back in the day was quite damaging.”
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| Spring Cottage, Stephen Ward's rented riverside cottage on the Cliveden estate, one of the key locations in the Profumo affair |
Cliveden House, the scene of the swimming-pool party at which Profumo met Keeler
The Profumo Affair was a scandal that toppled an entire government
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Christine Keeler - the woman at the heart of the controversyTo understand The Profumo Affair, you must first understand the woman at its very core... Christine Keeler. Beautiful, charming and beguiling, Keeler was a stunning-looking model and showgirl that had men simply falling at her feet. Her seductive ways saw plenty of suitors. In the summer of 1961, she would cause considerable upset and contribute to the end of Harold MacMillan's government.
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John Profumo - the man at the centre of the scandalThe Profumo Affair, as you might expect, involves an affair. An affair involving a man named Profumo. John Profumo, in fact. Now, of course, extramarital affairs aren't exactly uncommon, even some five and a half decades ago. What is slightly rarer, though? Carrying on behind your wife's back with a woman with ties to Russian spies when you're the UK's Minister for War.
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| The weekend at Cliveden Cottage that caused all the trouble During the weekend of the 8th and 9th of July 1961, Keeler and Profumo were among several guests of Stephen Ward, an osteopath with contacts in politics, the aristocracy and even the underworld. Ward introduced the 46 year-old Conservative politician to the 19 year-old Christine Keeler and encouraged them to 'get to know one another'. |
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The Russian connectionKeeler and Profumo began an affair. The big problem for the politician, his party and then-PM Harold MacMillan? The company that Ms. Keeler kept. At the time of her affair with John Profumo, she was also seeing a Russian military attaché called Eugene Ivanov. When the affair was leaked, the implication was obvious - Keeler was a spy and Profumo had been breached.
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Profumo had to step downIn March of 1963, Profumo lied about his affair to Parliament, claiming that there was - in his words - “no impropriety whatsoever”. Evidence that he was lying soon came to light and just ten weeks later Profumo resigned, copping to what he had done. It was “with deep remorse” that he had lied to the House of Commons, apparently.
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The fallout from The Profumo Affair was substantialJohn Profumo was ruined. At least temporarily and as a politician. Christine Keeler's life suffered after the affair too. She even served time in prison for perjury. It didn't end there. Harold MacMillan would stand down as Prime Minister because of the shame and Stephen Ward would even take his own life.
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Christine and her friend, fellow 'model' Mandy Rice DaviesThe full truth of exactly what happened in The Profumo Affair isn't exactly known. How entrenched in espionage were Ward and Keller? Were they sleeper or double agents? Was it an elaborate plot to undermine the British government? Or just some illicit debauchery that went a little too far...?
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The story was turned into a film starring Sir Ian McKellenA 1989 film of the scandal, understandably entitled 'Scandal', starred Joanne Whalley as Christine Keeler, John Hurt as Stephen Ward, Bridget Fonda as Mandy Rice-Davies and Sir Ian McKellen as John Profumo. There was an impressive supporting cast too, featuring the likes of Leslie Phillips as Lord Astor, Britt Ekland as Mariella Novotny and Roland Gift as Christine's ex, Johnny Edgecombe.
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The aftermath of Christine Keeler's story...Christine served four and a half months in prison in 1964. She went on to marry twice and have two children, though she mostly lived alone. She died on the 5th of December 2017.
Snapshots of Britain: The very best of British life in pictures from the Daily Mirror's incredible archives.
 
The series has let events breathe throughout, and Ward’s early dispatch gives the final episode room to examine what followed. Keeler is arrested for perjury and put on trial. Her silver-tongued barrister, Jeremy Hutchinson (Paul Ritter), the inspiration for Rumpole, can’t stop her from being sentenced to nine months in prison.
Her father Colin (Neil Morrissey) turns up out of the blue, promising to be there for her before promptly selling his story to the papers. Disgraced and alienated from high society, John Profumo (Ben Miles) presents himself at Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, to work as a social reformer. Their parallel falls from grace are signposted with a floor-scrubbing scene of limited subtlety.
I’ve no idea how true the history is, but it never purports to be documentary. The character acknowledges as much, towards the end, as she tries to move on with her life. “There’s the story, then there’s me, and they’re not the same, they’ve just got the same name.”
It’s an assertion of the writer’s freedom. But on its own terms, over six episodes, The Trial of Christine Keeler is a richly drawn portrait of a woman in a world of men whose worst instincts are defended by the institutions they run.
The government, the courts, the newspapers, the police: all close ranks, not so much out of individual malice as by a kind of imperceptible will to defend their own. As Hutchinson says: “Christine, you more than anyone must know that justice has nothing to do with the truth. It’s a game with ridiculous rules.” It’s anchored by an excellent performance from Cookson.
The script, which shows so well, only falters when it gives in to the temptation to tell. The finale’s emotional climax is an argument between Profumo and his wife, Valerie (Emilia Fox). Looking at the papers, he is relieved to notice that they appear to be “yesterday’s news at last”.
She replies that it seems harsh she is facing prison. “Are we endlessly to blame women for the weakness and wickedness of men?” she asks. “You have no idea. Being a teenage girl is like being invited to a glorious picnic, and then you realise you’re one of the sandwiches.”
As if realising mid-sentence how pathetic his initial counterargument is, that evil temptress women actually hold all the power, Profumo concludes by referring to his time in the military.
“There are things I saw in the war, terrible things,” he says. “I haven’t spoken about them with anyone, and I doubt I ever will. But what I saw in Italy – those men, those young men, while you were worrying about your close-up, having doors held open for you. I am a man... I only did what all my friends were doing, I just happened to get caught.” Prince Andrew, eat your heart out. Or perhaps your pituitary gland
    
Rare images of a “frightened and shy” Christine Keeler are expected to sell for thousands of pounds at auction next month.
Keeler, whose affair with Cabinet minister John Profumo shocked the establishment and made her a household name in the Sixties, posed for photographer Lewis Morley at the height of the scandal.
One of the images — showing her sitting backwards on a chair looking directly at the camera — ended up in a newspaper and became one of the defining images of Sixties London.
A contact sheet including that picture and another 10 is going under the hammer at Sotheby’s. They were originally taken in 1963 to promote a film about the scandal, called The Keeler Affair, which was never shown in this country.
Sotheby’s photographs specialist Justine Gruser said the wider selection of pictures showed a “frightened and shy” Keeler, who was just 21 when they were taken, rather than the woman who became a cause célèbre. She said: “We know the one where she is facing forward looking very confident… but in the others she seems a bit more shy and is hiding herself.
“After the affair her life was never the same again and I think this shows that she is not this confident person.”
In the spotlight: Sophie Cookson recreates the iconic photograph in BBC drama The Trial of Christine Keeler
Ms Gruser said she expected interest in the images, which are valued at about £8,000, would be heightened by the success of the recent BBC series, The Trial Of Christine Keeler.
The six-part drama, which starred Sophie Cookson as Keeler and Ben Miles as her politician lover, attracted millions of viewers. She said: “I think it is such an iconic image so people who collect photographs will be interested but I’m sure the TV drama will only help.
“A lot of people are interested in the Sixties and photographers like David Bailey or portraits of Twiggy attract the same kind of collectors, but this is as much a piece of memorabilia as a photograph.
“We have sold the most iconic one a few times in the past and it attracted a lot of interest, but from a different generation. But for younger people when I would talk about Christine Keeler, they would not know much about her… now obviously with the show and everything else there will be more interest.”
The pictures of Keeler astride the chair became so famous that Morley posed several more celebrities, including Sir David Frost and playwright Joe Orton, the same way and eventually gave the chair to the V&A.
The Made In Britain sale, on March 17, also includes work by leading artists David Hockney, Lucian Freud and Bridget Riley as well as Terry O’Neill photographs of David Bowie, Sir Elton John and Kate Moss.
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