Christine Margaret Keeler, the central character of a steamy love affair with a British minister that brought down a government in the 60s, died on December 5 at the age of 75.
Her son, Seymour Platt, said in his Facebook page: “I wish to share some sad news. My mother, the grandmother to my beautiful little girl, passed away late last night. She suffered in the last few years with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease but lost the fight. As many of you know my mother, Christine Keeler, fought many fights in her eventful life, some fights she lost but some she won. She earned her place in British history but at a huge personal price. We are all very proud of who she was”.
Described by the British press as ‘the scandal of the century’ it involved two lovers who shared her, one was the then secretary of state for war John Profumo and the other a Russian military attache Yevgeny Ivanov. When the relationships came to light in 1963 the scandal rocked the Harold Macmillan government amid fears of a cold war security leak. At the time Profumo was seen as a prime minister in waiting.
The disgraced minister told the House of Commons there was no “impropriety” in their relationship after being asked about it by opposition MPs who voiced concerns about national security implications. Eventually, after more newspaper stories emerged, he admitted lying to the house and quit.
At the age of 16 Keeler was working as a showgirl in a club in the heart of London’s red-light Soho district and she found herself launched into the high-society by a doctor, Stephen Ward, who introduced the stunning, leggy beauty to both Profumo and Ivanov. British press portrayed a call-girl sleeping with both the War Secretary and a Soviet spy was serious security breaches but Dominic Sandbrook wrote in The Guardian in 2013 saying what is really striking about the affair, which lasted one month and one day, is how trivial it was.
“Profumo is often described as a Prime Minister in waiting, but he never sat in the cabinet, was not one of the high-flyers of his generation and was a distinctly middle-order MP of the officer class. And though the Labour party made much of the security angle when the story broke in 1963, there was no security angle. As the head of MI5 told Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, Ward was ‘a pimp, not a spy’”.
He further said that Profumo and Ivanov did not share Keeler at the same time, as was often reported, since she had stopped seeing the Russian before the affair began. And it was ridiculous to imagine Keeler as an intermediary or informer; she was basically a glorified call-girl, ‘hardly likely to remember details of nuclear technology or Profumo’s Nato responsibilities’. The sensational impact of the Profumo scandal depended less on the facts of the case than on the hysterical press coverage during the Cold War era’ he said.
‘It was ridiculous to imagine Keeler as an intermediary or informer; she was basically a glorified call-girl, hardly likely to remember details of nuclear technology or Profumo’s Nato responsibilities. The sensational impact of the Profumo scandal depended less on the facts of the case than on the hysterical press coverage during the era of the Cold War and Bondmania’.
“The involvement of Ivanov gave the story a nice twist of Cold War paranoia, which went down perfectly in the year Bondmania reached its peak, while Keeler’s involvement with a string of West Indian man played into the hands of those people alarmed by rising immigration” Sandbrook said.
The West Indian in question was ‘Lucky’ Gordon. In the same year she was also a prosecution witness in the trial of the West Indian, one of her lovers, who she said beat and raped her. He was found guilty and sentenced to three years for grievous bodily harm. But when his conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal and new witnesses emerged, it became clear that she had given false evidence. Pleading guilty to perjury, Christine was sentenced to nine months in jail. She was just 20.
Mailonline says Christine and Mandy (Mandy Rice-Davies was a friend from her teenage years who worked as a dancer with Keeler and was involved with Ward’s social set) were never prostitutes, nor even paid escorts. They got presents, but in modern terms they would be simply seen as good-time girls, glamorous showgirls with a taste for rich boyfriends”.
What happened at the end was Profumo who was also reported to have an affair with a Nazi Spy Gisela Winegard for at least 17 years before the scandal, died in 2006, aged 91. John Ward was tried in1963 for living off “immoral earnings” after claims that he introduced women including Mandy and Keeler to rich clients. The case ended with Ward’s suicide after an overdose of sleeping pills.
Yevgeny Ivanov returned to the Soviet Union. His wife left him and he continued the naval career and was found dead in his Moscow flat in 1994 at the age of 68. Keeler disappeared from the scene and for years lived either at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, or at a flat in Chelsea.
The BBC is planning to make a six-episode series, The Trial Of Christine Keeler, and filming is due to begin in the UK in 2018 with plans to release it towards the end of the year. (Picture: Facebook)
