Christine Keeler: The Truth at Last Book

For Philip Larkin, sexual intercourse may have begun in 1963, but for many, particularly government ministers, spies and 19-year-old models such as Christine Keeler, it was already in full swing. Swingers of all political persuasion indulged in antics of all persuasions: heady stuff, but destined for scandal, and victims. Keeler, in this ghostwritten autobiography, makes very plain that she believes herself to have been made the biggest scapegoat for a scandal publicly about impropriety, but behind heavy doors about espionage. Already the author of several books on the affair, only now is she revealing her complete account of what occurred before and after she had sex with a government minister and a Russian spy in the same week. And it's not without irony that the publisher is Macmillan. In a sense, it's hard to appreciate the anger Keeler still obviously harbours, but it must be even harder to be her. Beautiful perhaps beyond her means, despite the frenzy of free love her story is luridly, unflaggingly bleak. An abortion at 16, held captive and raped twice by an infatuated madman, shot at by a jealous lover, imprisoned for perjury, disowned by her mother and one of her sons, the rest of her life saw her bear a stigma that resulted in men thinking her an easy proposition, and society shunning her. The new truths are, essentially, that she became pregnant by Profumo, that M15 chief Roger Hollis, was, if not the Fifth Man, then "certainly in the top 10", and that Stephen Ward, the Svengali osteopath, was a Russian spy who tried to kill her. Her most damning verdict, though, is on Lord Denning, appointed to investigate the scandal, whom she claims ignored her evidence as part of an official cover-up operation that damned her as a prostitute and the affair as a sex rather than security issue. The official papers will remain locked up until 2046, and until then, Keeler's truth will appear both plausible and frustratingly unverifiable. Her decision not to let sleeping dogs lie--because they lie and lie, she says--resurrects a story of original sin that remains, in an era of sleaze, relentlessly beguiling, even if, as she concludes, "I have survived and possibly I should not hope for more than that." --David VincentRead More