An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo

by Richard Davenport-Hines

WINNER OF THE POLITICAL BOOK AWARDS POLITICAL HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2014. Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Profumo scandal, An English Affair is a sharp-focused snapshot of a nation on the brink of social revolution. Britain in 1963 – Harold Macmillan was the Prime Minister of a Conservative government, dedicated to tradition, hierarchy and, above all, old-fashioned morality. But a breakdown of social boundaries saw nightclub hostesses mixing with aristocrats, and middle-class professionals dabbling in criminality. Meanwhile, Cold War paranoia gripped the public imagination. The Profumo Affair was a perfect storm, and when it broke it rocked the Establishment. In ‘An English Affair’, the author of the critically-acclaimed ‘Titainic Lives’ Richard Davenport-Hines brings Swinging London to life. The cast of players includes the familiar – louche doctor Stephen Ward, good-time girls Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, and Secretary for War John Profumo himself. But we also encounter the tabloid hacks, property developers and hangers-on whose roles have, until now, never been fully revealed. Sex, drugs, class, race, chequebook journalism and the criminal underworld – the Profumo Affair had it all. This is the story of how Sixties England cast off respectability and fell in love with scandal.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Biography, British Literature, Historical, Ebooks

400 pages, Paperback

First published December 17, 2012

About the author

AKA R.P.T. Davenport-Hines

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fascinating and persuasive account of the Profumo affair which upended some of my preconceptions, but sloppy execution costs it a star.

Davenport-Hines presents a scathing indictment of morals, hypocrisy, politics and the suborning of justice for social and political ends in 50s and early 60s Britain. It's a snapshot of society on the cusp of a seismic shift in attitudes, peopled with the still-famous, the forgotten and the notorious. he's persuasive in correcting the public record; I have to admit that I did think Keeler was sleeping with Ivanov at the same time as Profumo, but Davenport-Hines's meticulous examination of timetables convinces me that this and other nuggets of received wisdom about the case are in fact wrong. Many public figures are excoriated and I'm fascinated that Harold Wilson comes off quite badly,.

However, the organization is messy and convoluted and Davenport-Hines pursues the extraneous in greater detail than warranted. He can't resist repeating cogent conclusions, which are far less impressive the second and third retelling. Worst of all, he writes in a state of umbrage so that this is polemic as much as history. He'd have been better served to let the facts speak for themselves and gotten out of the way of his story.

For all that, well worth the reading.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book could not have come at a more interesting time - as I write, the British are stunned and appalled by the sustained abuse of 1,400 young children in Rotherham by mostly Asian criminals over an extended period of time.

Although the sexual shenanigans of a Minister of War, a Soviet attache, a naive osteopath, a couple of easy-living women and assorted walk-on rascals may seem a world away, there are grim similarities in the politics of these cases.

Sex is the marker of culture and politics is a struggle about identity and meaning as much as it is about resources and interests.

Davenport-Hines, an accomplished historian of British sexuality and culture, takes the Profumo affair as his cue for a more general inquiry into the cultural politics of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The book is in two parts. The first two thirds are an exquisitely argued dissection of the hypocrisies and miseries of the separate sub-cultures that came together in this sad case.

He looks first at Harold Macmillan, the tired and distracted but basically decent Tory Prime Minister, John Profumo, his fly Harrovian Minister of War and the faux-aristocratic world of the Astors at Cliveden.

This is high end of the game - an establishment whose ankles were constantly being bitten at by the middle class opportunists of Labour and who were recovering from what was, economically, a bad war.

Davenport-Hines then looks at the low end of the game - the self-made osteopath Stephen Ward, hapless victim in the story, the 'good-time girls', the Jewish landlords, the reptiles of the media and the security apparat.

In each case, though perhaps he tends occasionally to an edgy polemic, Davenport-Hines show a fairness and sympathy where he can and a coruscating critique where he must.

Although history is supposed to be non-judgmental, this is judgmental history that is good history because the facts dictate our sympathies.

The last third is less accomplished because there is something of an anti-climax in telling the story of the affair itself.

These are diminished, tired, hypocritical and weak people and that is just the political lot. One ends up feeling sympathy for some and disgust for others. Above all, one asks the question - what really is the point of it all.

On the simpatico side, there is, above all, Stephen Ward himself - Davenport-Hines broadly makes the case that this man was the victim of a deliberately arranged show trial based on 'fixed' evidence.

His desperate suicide at the tail end of the trial was nothing more than state-inspired manslaughter by corrupt cops, frightened politicians and a judicial system of consummate evil.

One also feels (this is quite surprising) a degree of sympathy for the better part of the establishment - no worse or better than the incoming hypocrites of Labour, a crew of equally consummate ambition and sheer nastiness.

Brown and Wigg are the worst of a rough bunch of damned near psychopaths, matched by the moral hysteria and viciousness of social conservatives like Hailsham. But what cautious decency there was seems to have been Tory.

The author is even-handed about the Rachman types and the good time girls, pointing out that their bad behaviours were not unconnected to the horrors of the holocaust and (in the case of some of the girls) appalling poverty.

It is not said in the book but an alignment of Jewish and other spivs and the good time girls - some of whom became rich and some dead - may be the mutual comfort of those who have seen the worst and are determined on survival.

But now to the villains - and these are men of what I would call evil, pure evil, ideological manipulation and destructive misuse of high intelligence to destroy others and ensure their own power.

Perhaps Davenport-Hines' angle is too obvious here - he loathes the prurient British media with its ugly intrusions into private life, all in the spurious claim that what the public is interested in is in the public interest.

Well, he is absolutely right and, though the worst excesses of the Beaverbrook and Cudlipp Press are long since passed, not much has changed - it is not just the 'hacking' but the determined propensity to lie and make and break people.

But more evil than the British media at its most narcissitically depraved is the corrupt cop and the political judiciary and we have these to thank for the destruction of Mr. Ward and the wrongful claims about Keeler and Rice-Davies.

On this score, I will not do a spoiler. The last third does have the aspect of whodunnit or rather 'whodidoverothers' about it. There are many unpleasant people but the worst is not Rachman or Keeler or even petty criminals like 'Lucky' Gordon but, ultimately, Alfred Denning, Law Lord.

This is not the conventional view of the noble Lord Denning but Davenport-Hines is persuasive and I leave you to read his account and make your own judgment. I would fear the Noble Lord returning to earth and destroying me as he destroyed the reputation of Ward if I went much further.

So, why is this relevant today? On two separate grounds.

The first is that struggles over sexuality continue to have resonance in the struggle over power at the heart of the State. The second is that, in many ways nothing has changed.

Taking the second first, we can look at this superficially. We have progress in that we have a Cabinet of Old Etonians rather than one of Old Etonians and Wykehamists running the country so perhaps we should be grateful.

We still have a reptilian media creating chaos and limiting opportunities for good governance, destroying lives, failing to investigate wrongs on the evidence and manufacturing outrage.

We still have an ambitious and cynical opposition whose silences and evasions over the Rotherham Abuse leave one with the most unpleasant of tastes in the mouth.

We still have a hidden establishment prepared to use the resources of the State and to create and manage law to preserve their power and cover up for their many incompetencies.

And we still have a political leadership utterly neglectful of the condition of Britain and more interested in cavorting ineffectually on the world's stage as if governance was a boy's own adventure.

Above all, we still have an underclass from which the wide boys and good time girls make their way only to face the hypocritical sexual controls and prejudice of a conservative centre of pseudo-liberals.

The Profumo affair is widely marked as the end of an era of establishment authority but I am not sure that Davenport-Hines is right to take the surface for the reality.

Politics is not only a history of circulating elites but of circulating ideologies and just as the new elite is no more kind and competent than the previous one so the succeeding ideology is no more compassionate.

The Rotherham Abuse scandal has all the signs of exposing one set of elites and an ideology in precisely the way that the Profumo Affair appeared to expose another.

Perhaps there is a cycle and the scandal had to happen to meet its needs but the Rotherham Abuse case is, like the Profumo case, essentially about power, incompetence, sexuality, ambition and national security.

In both cases,there is a rising elite (now national populism, then democratic socialism) waiting in the wings to throw out an establishment (now the liberal bien-pensants, then the propertied).

There are issues of competence - about national security in a class-based apparat (the Right's claim to rule) and the ability of the new managerialism to protect the vulnerable (the Left's claim to rule).

Then, the Minister's lying was the mere trigger for an outpouring of sexual neurosis and conservatism that backfired with the liberal reforms of the following Labour Government under an essentially Liberal Home Secretary.

Now, local council and police incompetence is the trigger for an outpouring of identity neurosis about immigration and wider government failures (regardless of party) which leads we know not where.

We may take the ambition as given.

And what of national security? Then it was about the Cold War and the threat from the boorish Khruschev. Today, it is about Islamism and organised crime and the enemy within.

So, this book is not just old history of antiquarian interest. It is about the dynamics of crisis when the elite starts to split and become nasty and new culturally revolutionary forces start to seep through the gap.

These revolutionary forces in the 1960s were not political but cultural - a decade and a half of half-baked social democracy was succeeded by nearly two decades of rule by the propertied, after all.

What did happen though was the 'sticking' of Roy Jenkins' liberal reforms so that Tories now happily compete for the gay vote and compromise with the diversity and cultural studies ethos of what were left-wing loons only thirty years before.

What is going on in Britain today looks set to be equally revolutionary and in ways we cannot yet predict. We suspect libertarian not liberal and national not internationalist.

It is not just Rotherham just as the change in the 1960s was not just Profumo. It is the Syrian vote in Parliament, UKIP's development as a national populist movement in Labour areas, the sheer scale of child and elderly abuse (we ain't seen nothing yet cumulatively) and the compromises on core identity values.

Davenport-Hines' book won't tell you how things will pan out but it will be a partial guide to the dynamics of what happens when elites become more interested in destroying each other than in building a common weal.

Also worth reading: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ****

[David Conway · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 1963 Profumo affair is often described as Britain’s ‘worst’ political scandal, a turning point in the nation’s sexual mores, and a precursor of the swinging sixties. None of those assertions really hold up: the Jeremy Thorpe trial of 1979 was profoundly more serious, and attitudes to sex had been changing since 1960, when an Old Bailey jury decided that D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not obscene.

Nonetheless, Profumo holds a special place in the British psyche: a unique cocktail of stately homes, swimming pools, politicians, spies, tarts and orgies. The fiftieth anniversary has prompted a new analysis by Richard Davenport-Hines: An English Affair, Sex Class and Power in the Age of Profumo.

In the opening pages the author recalls his father driving up Park Lane in a black Alvis with the hood down, stopping at the then new Hilton Hotel, and announcing with pride that another hotel was planned next door. In this thumbnail sketch we see how the boy’s reactions to the age were formed. His father was one of a breed who loved modern architecture, fast cars, leggy mistresses and the brash new showiness of the times. Today, the dated and unlovely Hilton still dominates Park Lane and reminds us of a different age.

Davenport-Hines meticulously sets the scene for his story, reminding us that it was a relaxation in planning laws by Macmillan’s government which not only scarred the London skyline but created a new breed of millionaire speculators. At the same time, dilapidated Victorian terraces were being rented to the poor by slum landlords like Rachman, who kept Mandy Rice-Davies as his mistress.

The author plots, in detail, the many strands of English history which led to that fateful meeting by the Cliveden swimming pool. They include a patrician, grouse shooting prime minister who ran his cabinet as if it were a gentlemen’s club in St James; a vindictive press baron who detested the Astor family and an ambitious Labour leader keen to undermine a government already weakened by spy scandals.

Into this high octane mix blundered society osteopath Stephen Ward; a swinger who liked introducing pretty young girls to his wealthy and powerful friends. He was charming, garrulous and wildly indiscreet. It is Ward, more than anyone else, who will be the victim; and his indiscretion will cost him his life. We now know, beyond any doubt, that his show trial was a sham; the police intimidated witnesses and fabricated evidence. Ward was not a pimp, and Keeler and Rice-Davies were not prostitutes. They were all promiscuous, and the girls accepted money and gifts from their lovers, but they did not sell sex. For Ward, the final and unbearable blow was the desertion of his friends and he committed suicide the night before his trial ended.

Today, the high jinks at Cliveden would barely raise an eyebrow. The Cold War is over; we have lived through worse scandals and now hold our politicians in low regard. Keeler and Rice-Davies would be reality television stars with their own brands of perfume, and Ward would have written a best-selling autobiography. Britain however, was a very different place in 1963.

The author combines impeccable research with delightful style; his prose is beautifully crafted and richly articulated. I cannot remember the last time I saw the word frottage in any book, but I enjoyed being reminded of it and did not begrudge my occasional trips to the dictionary. This is English political and social history at its best, unmissable!

[Gerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly researched 'An English Affair' brings to life the Profumo affair of 1963 and gives the background to how the affair arose, the political background and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's apparent inability to deal with it reasonably and successfully.

Before we get to the main event Richard Davenport-Hines in his Overture sets the scene with some personal reminiscences of that time in 1963. And amusingly he recalls a tale when his headmaster addressed the school and announced 'It has come to my attention that boys are bringing James Bond novels into school. I will not have them on the premises. They are sad-is-tic novels and I will thrash any boy who is found in possession of one.'

That statement quite clearly sets the scene for the moral tone of the day and it was, therefore, no surprise that Stephen Ward, Jack Profumo, Bill Astor and the rest had no chance of getting away with whatever had gone on with Christine Keeler and her associates.

And what exactly had gone on? Ward was pilloried, evidence against him was corrupted, perjury was committed and unsurprisingly he was eventually convicted, a decision that pushed him to take his own life. And later it transpired that had he appealed against the sentence, he would have won his appeal - but it was by then far too late.

The author sets the book out in sections. Firstly he introduces the cast, and there are plenty of them, many in high places, then he discusses the Prime Minister, who was not at first thought to be likely to take on the job. But he did and the challenge for him was to hold onto his job in the wake of the Profumo scandal ... subsequently he did not do so.

There is a profile of the War Minister, Jack Profumo, followed by a look at Lord Astor and his residence at Cliveden where these two worthies came together at parties and where the subterfuge of Keeler, Ivanov and the rest first manifested itself.

A profile of 'Doctor' Stephen Ward (he was always annoyed that the British establishment would not recognise his American qualifications as a doctor) is succinct and arouses plenty of sympathy while a look at the good time girls arouses quite different feelings; Keeler seemed to make large amounts of money by falsifying her stories to suit various outlets; a sum of £24,000 was paid to her on one occasion.

Landlords of rented property, focussing on Rachmann, a protagonist in the affair, is followed a look at the journalists, 'hacks' as the author calls them, who covered the story and revelled in the revelations as they came out. The subject of spies, and Ivanov features high on the list, although there is no definite evidence that he was procurring information from Profumo, via Keeler, the alleged mistress of the pair, follows.

All this detailed research is then brought together in a deep discussion of the affair itself and the subsequent trials and finishes with the view that the Profumo affair did more harm to Macmillan than anything else in his whole administration and that it also did more lasting damage to the Conservative party, who were then, somewhat surprisingly the author reveals, led by Sir Alec Douglas Home.

It is certainly enlightening as a story of sex, class and power in the age of Profumo, whose name, whether he and his heirs like it or not, lives on forever despite what he may or may not have done in 1963.

[Ade · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know about the Profumo Affair: pimping, prostitution, spying, sordid perversion and black lies. Well, the last is true anyway. The rest is media - or police - invention, according to Davenport-Hines's rivetting account of both the period and the affair. The scene is set with exemplary wit and insight, while each of the players receives a decent biography and a fairminded appraisal of their actions and motives. Perhaps the book's greatest strength is less in the account of the events themselves, by turns exciting and unsettling as that is, than its discussion of the mores and attitudes of late fifties Britain that led to the ghastly mess, which Davenport-Hines argues with some conviction effectively changed the entire political scene. (Indeed, he even notes that the scandal arguably triggered the gradual transformation of the Conservative party from that of Macmillan to that of Thatcher, as the Establishment gave way to meritocracy and managerialism.)

What I find most intriguing is where the author stands on the effects of Profumo. At times, he seems to have a remarkable sympathy for the traditions of deference, patriotic service and the discreet exercise of authority, all of which suffered a death blow. Profumo, he seems to say, may have been an incorrigible philanderer but that was his private business, and in all other respects he was a competent, well-liked if unremarkable minister. (Though less appealing as a husband: his unfortunate but not unobservant wife, the former actress Valerie Hobson, once lamented of his tailoring, "surely there must be some way of concealing your penis".) Yet it was the self-serving or shortsighted actions of respectable, quietly "competent" Establishment figures that allowed his brief relationship with Christine Keeler to blow up in the way it did. Most of all, Davenport-Hines appears to despise Wilson's Labour party for capitalising on the story while failing to offer anything superior to address the inadequacies of the Old Boy's Network that ran the country.

Of the remaining key figures, Stephen Ward is clearly the most tragic, regardless of his personality flaws, Keeler an abused, ill-educated and badly led young girl in search only of a good time (although ultimately a product of unfortunate circumstances), Rice-Davies is a mere secondary and Bill Astor appears to be an unwitting bystander and hapless victim, although given that the author was given access to a number of his private papers by Astor's family, perhaps this reading was understandably sympathetic. Perhaps the lowest are the various newspaper proprietors, editors and journalists and their equally unprincipled counterparts in the legal profession. Davenport-Hines laments that Profumo spelt the end of privacy and the wholesale rush towards notoriety as celebrity, under the pretence of embracing 'modernity'.

If you've read any popular histories of Britain in the fifties and sixties, this book would make an ideal accompaniment. Not a pretty tale, but it is effectively delivered.

[Alan Wightman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have tried to concoct a summary of the story, and it comes down to this: A Cabinet Minister (Profumo) lies about an affair he is having, is caught in the lie, and resigns. An associate (Ward) of the lady in question (Keeler), in an attempt by the government to discredit him, is subject to a substantial police inquiry, is tried for several crimes, and found guilty of only two minor ones (indeed, crimes that are no longer illegal*). Such, however, is the seedy nature of the trial that Ward is "cut" by his so-called friends and clients, and kills himself. Keeler is found guilty of perjuring herself (under police pressure) in a related case, and is sentenced to nine months' jail.

And that, in 345 pages plus acknowledgements, notes and index, is that. "Much Ado About Nothing"? Perhaps.

It is the openly sexual nature of the major protagonists, and the involvement (albeit almost insignificantly) of a member of the Soviet embassy (Ivanov), giving an air of intrigue, that lead to a moral panic storm in the gutter press. The government dithers in its handling of Profumo, but is ruthless in its prosecution of the mostly blameless Ward. The affair may been a factor in the Conservative government's defeat the following year (1964). It brought about a feeling in Britain, so says the author, that authority and the ruling-classes were not to be trusted. Not, stresses the author, that the Labour party were any better.

Despite some interesting aspects, it didn't feel like an affair of such importance as to deserve a tome of such weight. Perhaps if you had lived through it, or currently live in England, it may carry more pertinence. Certainly the structure, with 240 pages essentially of back-story, did not help its readability. Some of these earlier chapters were boring, particularly the one regarding real estate.

Have your dictionary handy unless you know: quondam, demimondaines, derogation, sedulous, purblind, nugatory, desuetude, captious, mulcted, spiv and termagant.

* If you introduce a man to a woman aged 16 to 21, and they subsequently have intercourse, you have committed a crime!

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

What actually happened in the Profumo Affair was remarkably unscandalous--a womanizing Cabinet minister had sex a few times with a young woman not his wife--not admirable, but hardly out of the ordinary; his wife and the vulnerable young woman he had sex with, Christine Keeler, were the only people concerned, really. The ensuing scandal and the consequences were out of all proportion to the actual events. What I found most interesting about this very interesting book was the way the events provide a lens through which to look at the whole period. And if you are one of those people who thinks people used to be so much more moral and decent than they are now, then this book provides plenty of reminders that the good old days were actually not very good at all for an awful lot of people.

[Akin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lively, entertaining. Lazily, I had assumed that the book was a straightforward re-assessment of the Profumo affair. Quite pleased to find that whilst this was the core, the book presented a spirited - if, at times, polemical - assessment of the age of licentiousness.

Important to note that the villains, in R D-H's telling, weren't the hapless Ward or the naive Keeler, but rather the grasping press, shameless thrusting political class and the peevish Lord Denning.

The book is sprawling in scope, without ever *quite* becoming undisciplined. That said, I think it suffers a little from the author's (apparently) encyclopaedic recall of the lives, times and connections of actors great and small in the affair, and actors great and small of the time even if not directly connected to the affair. A couple of 'afters' leaves one with the impression that the author has a lasting grudge against Harrow, and cutting disdain for Winchester; whilst amusing in both cases, these and other jibes do distract a little from the main course.

But never mind. Sound reading, useful reminder that much of what we think we know about the Profumo affair, we probably actually don't know at all. Recommended reading, especially for students of the absurdities (and occasional delights ) of the class system.

[Gram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hardly anyone escapes censure from Richard Davenport-Hines in his book about the Profumo Affair - the sex scandal which rocked Britain in the early 1960's. Lies were told then - and are still being told - about the hapless Stephen Ward (an osteopath to the rich and famous) who was framed at the instigation of senior British politicians, aided and abetted by the British legal system and the Metropolitan Police - the police force responsible for law enforcement in Greater London. Politicians lied, judges lied, prosecutors lied, British secret service agents lied (a Russian diplomat had also had an affair with Christine Keeler and unfounded allegations of spying were made). Britain's largest newspaper proprietors lied and their disgustingly behaved journalists lied and the police lied - and the latter forced witnesses in the trial of Stephen Ward to lie. Ward attempted suicide the day before the guilty verdict in his trial. That verdict was a foregone conclusion. Somebody had to be made an example of and Ward was of no importance, so the British Establishment - especially the grandees of the Tory (Conservative) Party - instructed police and lawyers to ensure Ward took the blame. His only real crime - according to Davenport-Hines - was to live an unconventional life. In the summer of ’61 John Profumo, Minister for War, enjoyed a brief affair with Christine Keeler - a young woman who was NOT a prostitute, yet Ward would be convicted of the trumped-up charge of living off her "immoral earnings". Profumo lied to Parliament about the affair, was found out and resigned. Opposition politicians from the Labour Party - eager to regain power as the elected Government - behaved no better than their Tory counterparts. Profumo later rehabilitated himself by doing charitable work. Stephen Ward was not so lucky. Sentence in his trial was postponed until he was fit to appear, but he died from his suicide attempt, without regaining consciousness. Friends in high places (including the Astors who allowed Ward to live in a riverside cottage on their Cliveden estate) had turned their backs on him when he needed them most. Only 6 people attended his funeral. At his grave lay a wreath, made up of one hundred white carnations, and a card signed by the theatre critic & writer, Kenneth Tynan. It bore the simple inscription: "To Stephen Ward, Victim of Hypocrisy". The snobbery & hypocrisy which still predominates London society can be found in almost every page of this book. This is a history book without any heroes. To quote a phrase from the "Swinging 60's" - it tells it like it is.

[Katia N · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the beginning of this book at a bookshop and was very much attracted. It starts with the author retelling the story how he aged 9 was severely punished in a private school for using the word "orgy" as an example of a word starting with a vowel in class in 1963. It wonderfully illustrated how stiffened the atmosphere was in England of that time.

I was hoping he would carry on telling the Profumo's affair story with the same amount of personal insight through the whole book. But he has moved on to more traditional way how the history is told. The book is split into two parts: "The Cast" expanding on different contributors to the scandal and its historic background; the second part is "Drama" - the events as such. The author has put more emphasis on the first part. It is understandable, but I would prefer vise versa. Also subjectively I think he sympathises more with Profumo and Ward while Keeler seems to get much less sympathy at these pages. Again I can totally understand why and I do not object biases, still it feels a bit unfair.

Overall it is extremely well researched book and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the history of that period, even in spite of my reservations mentioned above.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

As sometimes happens to me, I read all of the good reviews and wondered why I didn't feel the same way. I think it may have been because I didn't pay attention to the Table of Contents. If I had, I would have seen that Davenport-Hines was going to cover each of the main players and only then get into the story. But I found it confusing. I wonder how many of the good reviews were written by people who knew British politics (better than I did)and knew already the general story of the Profumo Affair. I thought the approach was interesting in setting the stage before you saw the play. Keep in mind that this is not about Profumo. It is, as the title states, about the "Age of Profumo." Davenport-Hines is painting a portrait of a time and place with its confused social mores.

[Ruth Saville · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very interesting and at times well written... Just so many facts to take in. Hard work in my opinion and not much reward. I liked the authors story telling style at the start- I wish this could have continued.

[Vikas Datta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revisits the episode perfectly and the paradigm shift in public perceptions and proclivities it heralded..

[Becky Henderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best elements of this book are the coverage of the legal injustice against Stephen Ward and the censorious sexual morality of the era (combined with the amorality of the press that promoted it).

However, Davenport-Hines seems to have a vendetta against the Labour party of the time. He has no interest in considering whether the country did need a change in the centuries-old system that made the class you were born into was determinative of your future. He does not submit Macmillan and the Tories to the same level of criticism as Labour, and you are left with the impression that Davenport-Hines believes the Tory good old boys had a more sensible way of doing things.

He also seems overly enamoured with the old-fashioned Establishment that ran England at the time. He cannot relate to individuals who felt alienated by the snobbery of the Foreign Service. Again this system does not get the same level of criticism as most of the other subjects covered here. Instead, reverse snobbery is mentioned more than a few times as the real problem (new money or lower classes criticising the upper classes).

Finally, within the first sentence of the book Davenport-Hines has described his childhood teacher as an "old spinster", so it seems hypocritical of him to later criticise Lord Denning (much as Denning is deserving of criticism) for describing women involved in the Profumo affair as "girls" in his report. An editor should have recognised the writer's own use of derogatory gendered language.

[Peter Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good account of a watershed moment in modern BRITISH history,written in a fast paced but detailed style.It did though leave me with a bad taste in my mouth and destroyed what little faith I had in newspapers,journalists,judges,the legal system,the police,some politicians as their lies ans corruptions were revealed.Stephen Ward May he a been a silly man in many ways but he did not deserve to be arrested,pilloried and tried for his mistakes,if mistakes they be.His suicide before he was sentenced was certainly undeserved.This book tells the whole unedifying story..

[Femi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rich evocation of a scandal that, in Davenport-Hines view, ushered in the modern era of scandal, gutter-press and the deterioration of deference in society.

The book is great in scope although, I believe, is too eager to build an equivalence between establishment corruption and those quarters, e.g. the labour party, that criticised it.

We are given a brilliant cast of characters whose interweaving fates are masterfully chronicled. Davenport-Hines is right to tackle each constituent sector of society in distinct chapters.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly exhaustive...so much so that the second half of the book, detailing the actual scandal, nearly collapses on top of itself in its embrace of so many events and people. And yet...it doesn't collapse, and the society it paints -- a Britain holding on to the last vestiges of its ancien regime past -- is stunning in its sclerotic stuttering on the way to its death. An amazing piece of historical scholarship.

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating account,as promised on the cover, of the relationship between sex, class & power in the time of the Profumo scandal.

Davenport-Hines, despite swallowing a dictionary, has done his research to show how an age of class-bound deference moved into a sceptical swinging Britain. And shockingly reveals the close-ties between high power and a corrupt police force, where witnesses were threatened with trumped-up charges if they told the truth rather than towing the official line.

[Darla Ebert · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sad chapter from English history however a pivotal point wherein the elitest class had to face their own indiscretions. A high price was paid character wise but it had to happen. As in, "your sin will find you out" a Scriptural way of saying, in a sense, "what goes around comes around".
A sad story with suicides and early deaths, destroyed reputations and plenty of questions left lingering.

[Forest Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic read!! I've always been enamored with the Profumo scandal and this was a great read. Great insight into Keeler and the group. I also was fascinated by the laws on divorce and the harsh penalties on guns, etc. Historians will love this!!!

[Luis Rodriguez]

Not only a good account of the Profumo Affair, but the author gives an excellent portrayal of the period that puts the affair in its context.

[Kimmo Sinivuori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Davenport-Hines has written the definitive history of the Profumo Affair that shook the foundations of British establishment in the last years before the Swinging London and the change in morals and attitudes came about. It can be said that the Affair was the watershed when the old gave way to the modern. The strength of Davenport-Hines' book is that it so eloquently demonstrates how that change came with a high price. It cost people involved in the scandal with their reputations and destroyed careers and resulted in loss of human life as the main victim of the affair, Dr. Stephen Ward, took his own life.

The glamorous part of the Profumo Affair has been well presented in the 1989 movie The Scandal by Michael Caton-Jones. The movie that I like very much was also my introduction to the Affair. It had everything for an entertaining scandal; cool swingers like Dr. Ward, moneyed aristocrats like Lord and Lady Astor, politicians with an appetite for pretty girls like the Minister of War John Profumo, a Russian spy in the form of Naval Attaché Yevgeni Ivanov, crooked cops and judges like Lord Denning, and of course good-time girls like Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies.

However, what started as a glamorous mix of fascinating characters turned into a tragedy. Davenport-Hines does a splendid job in explaining how and why and by who did the tragedy come about. The book is not only well written but has a very nice structure. The first part of the book sets the scene while the second gives a fast paced account of the drama as it enfolded.

Reading the first part I really got a feeling of what the psychological landscape of England was in the post-war years. Davenport-Hines explains how the world was changing fast in the late fifties and early sixties and how the so called guardians of public morals were completely out of touch of the changes. In particular, the moralists didn't have a clue about how the attitudes towards sex, esp. those of young women. The moralists were alarmed that women were becoming more and more liberated and independent.

The reason why the very innocent activities of Ward and Keeler and Rice-Davies turned into a tragedy was because the moralists wanted to stop the clock and put an end to the changes taking place. Some of the moralists may have had good intentions, although even this can be debated, but their actions had terrible unintended consequences.

In the second part of the book Davenport-Hines considers that the defining moment of the Affair was the decision by the Home Secretary Henry Brooke to at any cost make Ward an example of how law abiding good citizens should not behave. Since there was no basis to charge Ward with espionage as he was actually working on behalf of the MI5 it was decided that the Metropolitan Police will find evidence of Ward's illegal and immoral activities.

Davenport-Hines explains how the police was instructed to investigate Ward in order to find out if he had done any crimes that he could be charged with. Immoral police officers then set out to find out, or create as it turned out, evidence to secure a conviction that their political masters had set out to achieve. This led to a miscarriage of justice that is on par with the Dreyfus Affair.

What is almost sickening is the way in which those high ranking officials and politicians that had trumped up the charges against Ward kept vilifying him even after his suicide. Lord Denning's independent investigation to the Affair is a case study in white washing and vilification of the innocent.

Sam Shepard has written in his book about Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue that nothing exposes the fallacy of objective journalism than being the subject that is written about. Davenport-Hines comes to the same conclusion as the newspapers emerge as the other main villain in this drama. It is difficult to believe how completely void the Fleet Street was of any morals and ethics during that period.

This book was a great read; it gave new insight and made one think about moral questions. What more can one ask from a book?

[Dead John Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo I think you'll either love this book or hate it. If you are English and understand the class system you have a chance of finding out. If you are not English thus whole thing may mystify you.Meticulously documented and annotated throughout, the author sets the scene chapter by chapter before the final drama unfolds. Without the preceding chapters that give the prevailing mores of the times in great detail, I think the scale of this scandal would be lost when looked at from the viewpoint of today's permissive times. The context is everything when dealing with historic events. What shattered the world a hundred years ago would not raise an eyebrow today.Example: In relation prosecuting Ward for living off immoral earnings, which was a put-up job, it was inconceivable at the time that either Christine Keeler or Mandy Rice-Davies could be self actualising females who could decide for themselves who they had sex with. Women having sex outside of marriage with different men at that time could only be, by definition, prostitutes.Rife with contradiction between the Establishment's stated morality and those of its ranking members, the ease of outright lies and their acceptance at all levels within the Establishment, the contrasts could not be clearer. Hypocrisy was and still is the hub of British class culture. The corrupt self-righteous newspapers calling for the blood of minor transgressors still rule the day in that God-forsaken land.Similar in context to the book about the Kray Twins that I read recently, another lid lifted of the filth and depravity of those who make the rules.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this dense account of post-war politics and mores, the action, the "Profumo affair", is portrayed against its historical background by first introducing the main groups of actors.
Politicians, "hacks", aristocrats, big property developers, seedy semi-underworld figures and women too young, pretty and naive for their own good are the players; the scene, their London and Home Counties playgrounds; the time, the run up to the "Swinging Sixties".

I certainly enjoyed the first couple of chapters for the political history of MacMillan's fading Tory government, the era's ruthless entrepreneurs, and the rabidly value-free sex lives of the rich and influential.

The Ward/Keeler/Profumo affair was not covered until the last quarter of the book. I almost gave up but, exhausted, read on and was glad I had since several of my misconceptions were dispelled. Ward seems to have been the scapegoat because he was an outsider; Profumo deserved his banishment but carried on living his privileged life; Keeler lived a louche and out-of-control life but was also horribly used and abused; several of the business types came to a sticky end.

The writing is accomplished and the language "thick" - it sent me to the dictionary. I like that! A very meaty read but not for everyone. It probably helps if you're a political junky.

[Murray Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Davenport-Hines’s history of the Profumo affair is a readable look at the ‘the decay of the old British Establishment’ — how a single, rather minor incident (a womanising politician has a brief affair with a good-time girl) dealt the ‘death-blow of an England that was deferential and discreet’.

The book is divided into two sections. The first, and longer, part sets out the cast of this particular farce, with chapters called Prime-Minister, War Minister, Lord, Doctor, Good-Time Girls, Landlords, Hacks, and Spies. Then on with ‘the Drama’ itself: Acting Up, Show Trials, and Safety Curtain.

Not knowing a lot about the affair, I found the book a good introduction to late 1950s/early 1960s British attitudes, particularly towards class, the press, women, sexuality, and, most of all, power and privilege. Far more shocking than what consenting adults get up to behind closed doors is the abuses of power that centred on the trial, as ‘the Establishment’ fought to keep their tottering ivory towers upright, while the press of the day (utterly unscrupulous in search of a story, any story, however untrue) fought equally viciously, and with as little regard to truth. Eye-opening and, as always with good history, depressingly relevant to today.

[Andrew Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling analysis of the Profumo affair and the attitudes and society that might it possible, written with great style and a biting wit. The extensive research is never laboured.

The structure is surprising: the first 2/3 of the book are given to setting the scene and introducing the main characters - only then is the scandal itself recounted. This has displeased some reviewers on this site but I thought the technique succeeded by showing the best known events in a vivid background.

Even if you know the basic story, the account of how the naive Stephen Ward was effectively crucified by the establishment is still a disturbing picture of the way the legal system can be manipulated and the mass media used to crush an individual.

The Press don't come out of this very well at all and it is easy to see the parallels with the phone-hacking scandals of our own times.

[Gary Knapton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A real gem for modern history pop-cult buffs. A striking balance of colloquial intrigue versus technical research. Very hard to put down. Media and police corruption with political backing. Deep roots of causation of Profumo explored. Very satisfying, intellectually. The book is chapter headed and sectioned like a play transcript and it works.

Poor little Christine Keeler and Stephen Ward.

Davenport-Hines manages to deliver a broad sweeping surmise of British Society in 1963 that from here just looks comically odd if not quaint - yet he succeeds also in conveying the terror and gravity of living through it. Like a thorough shrink he tracks back often through a characters upbringing and ancestry to locate deep-seated causal agents. Joyous. Fun. Riveting and intellectually bang on the money too. Full marks!

[Doug Newdick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book. It starts very slowly, examining the lives, backgrounds, context and motivations of each of the major players in the Profumo scandal that occurred in Britain in the early 60s. It weaves this through with threads describing the geist of England in the late 50s and early 60s. The argument is that one can only understand the Profumo scandal and its impact on British politics and culture with this deep background. The book does a good job of this, though at the price of some very slow pacing for the first half of the book. If you are interested in Britain at that period, or understanding the forces that shaped media culture then this is worth reading.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although there is little that is really new here the author conjures up the sleazy world of British politics in the 1950s and 60s in an entertaining and revelatory way. No one comes out of this sorry tale very well and it a reminder that however cynical we may be about our current politics its is surely no worse than what went before, and in fact probably much better.
What is particularly appalling is the way the police and the press behaved in those days and the dreadful injustice that was perpetrated on Stephen Ward is at times quite painful to read.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very much enjoyed this book. I lived through the times covered by it, and I can now appreciate how little I knew or understood about the events of those years. A case, I think, of learning how the other half really live (or lived) and how rotten and ruthless their world can be. Be careful who you trust, but WHO can you trust? I am sure that much of what the author reveals has been widely known for many years, but it is still an eye-opener to those of us who have lived sheltered lives a little lower down the social scale!