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Matthew Keeler Biography & Facts

The Profumo affair was a major scandal in twentieth-century British politics. John Profumo, the 46-year-old Secretary of State for War in Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, had an extramarital affair with the 19-year-old model Christine Keeler beginning in 1961. Profumo denied the affair in a statement to the House of Commons in 1963; weeks later, a police investigation proved that he had lied. The scandal severely damaged the credibility of Macmillan's government, and Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister in October 1963, citing ill health. The fallout contributed to the Conservative government's defeat by the Labour Party in the 1964 general election. When the Profumo affair was revealed, public interest was heightened by reports that Keeler may have been simultaneously involved with Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché, thereby creating a possible national security risk. Keeler knew both Profumo and Ivanov through her friendship with Stephen Ward, an osteopath and socialite who had taken her under his wing. The exposure of the affair generated rumours of other sex scandals and drew official attention to the activities of Ward, who was charged with a series of immorality offences. Perceiving himself as a scapegoat for the misdeeds of others, Ward took a fatal overdose during the final stages of his trial, which found him guilty of living off the immoral earnings of Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies. An inquiry into the Profumo affair by a senior judge, Lord Denning, assisted by a senior civil servant, T. A. Critchley, concluded that there had been no breaches of security arising from the Ivanov connection. Denning's report was later described as superficial and unsatisfactory. Profumo subsequently worked as a volunteer at Toynbee Hall, an East London charitable trust. By 1975 he had been officially rehabilitated, although he did not return to public life. He died, honoured and respected, in 2006. By contrast, Keeler found it difficult to escape the negative image attached to her by press, law, and parliament throughout the scandal. In various, sometimes contradictory, accounts, she challenged Denning's conclusions relating to security issues. Ward's conviction has been described by analysts as an act of establishment revenge, rather than serving justice. In the 2010s the Criminal Cases Review Commission reviewed his case but decided against referring it to the Court of Appeal. Dramatisations of the Profumo affair have been shown on stage and screen. Background Government and press In the early 1960s, the British news media were dominated by several high-profile spying stories: the breaking of the Portland Spy Ring in 1961, the capture and sentencing of George Blake in the same year and, in 1962, the case of John Vassall, a homosexual Admiralty clerk who had been blackmailed into spying by the Soviet Union. Vassall was subsequently sentenced to eighteen years in prison. After suggestions in the press that Vassall had been shielded by his political masters, the responsible minister, Thomas Galbraith, resigned from the government pending inquiries. Galbraith was later exonerated by the Vassall Tribunal, after which judge Lord Radcliffe sent two newspaper journalists to prison for refusing to reveal their sources for sensational and uncorroborated stories about Vassall's private life. The imprisonment severely damaged relations between the press and the Conservative government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan; columnist Paul Johnson of the New Statesman warned, "any Tory minister or MP ... who gets involved in a scandal during the next year or so must expect—I regret to say—the full treatment". John Profumo John Profumo was born in 1915 and was of Italian descent. He first entered Parliament in 1940 as the Conservative member for Kettering while serving with the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, and combined his political and military duties through the Second World War. Profumo lost his seat in the 1945 general election but was elected again in 1950 for Stratford-on-Avon. From 1951 he held junior ministerial office in successive Conservative administrations. In 1960, Macmillan promoted Profumo to Secretary of State for War, a senior post outside the Cabinet. After his marriage in 1954 to Valerie Hobson, one of Britain's leading film actresses, Profumo may have conducted casual affairs, using late-night parliamentary sittings as his cover. His tenure as war minister coincided with a period of transition in the armed forces, involving the end of conscription and the development of a wholly professional army. Profumo's performance was watched with a critical eye by his opposition counterpart George Wigg, a former regular soldier. Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies, and Lord Astor Christine Keeler, born in Uxbridge in 1942, left school at age 15 with no qualifications and took a series of short-lived jobs in shops, offices and cafés. She aspired to be a model, and at age 16 had a photograph published in Tit-Bits magazine. In August 1959, Keeler found work as a topless showgirl at Murray's Cabaret Club in Beak Street, Soho. This long-established club attracted a distinguished clientèle of whom, Keeler wrote, they "could look but could not touch". Shortly after starting at Murray's, Keeler was introduced to a client, the society osteopath Stephen Ward. Captivated by Ward's charm, she agreed to move into his flat, in a relationship she has described as "like brother and sister"—affectionate but not sexual. Keeler left Ward after a few months to become the mistress of the property dealer Peter Rachman, and later shared lodgings with Mandy Rice-Davies, a fellow Murray's dancer two and a half years her junior. The two girls left Murray's and attempted without success to pursue careers as freelance models. Keeler also lived for short periods with various boyfriends, but regularly returned to Ward, who had acquired a house in Wimpole Mews, Marylebone. There she met many of Ward's friends, among them Lord Astor, a long-time patient who was also a political ally of Profumo. She often spent weekends at a riverside cottage that Ward rented on Astor's country estate, Cliveden, in Buckinghamshire. Stephen Ward and Yevgeny Ivanov Stephen Ward, born in Hertfordshire in 1912, qualified as an osteopath in the United States. After the Second World War he began practising in Cavendish Square, London, where he rapidly established a good reputation and attracted many distinguished patients. These connections, together with his personal charm, brought him considerable social success. In his spare time, Ward attended art classes at the Slade school, and developed a profitable sideline in portrait sketches. In 1960 he was commissioned by The Illustrated London News to provide a series of portraits of national and international figures. These included members of the Royal Family, among them Prince Philip and Princess Margaret. Ward hoped to visit the Soviet Union to .... Discover the Matthew Keeler popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Matthew Keeler books.