‘...MAKE SURE THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PROFUMO AFFAIR IS TOLD’: CHRISTINE KEELER
Christine Keeler’s final wish was that the ‘truth’ be told about her role in the Profumo affair, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. The former showgirl, who died last year aged 75, asked in her will that her second son, Seymour Platt, ‘do what he can to make sure that the truth is told’. She also left him her £77,000 estate.
Keeler was 19 when she had affairs with Soviet spy Yevgeny Ivanov and War Minister John Profumo in 1961.
When the love triangle was revealed two years later, it scandalised the nation and – due to the potential national security
risk it posed – cost Profumo his political career.
Keeler spent the rest of the life railing against claims that she had been a prostitute. Stephen Ward, who had introduced her to Profumo and Ivanov, was found guilty of living off the immoral earnings of Keeler and another woman, Mandy Rice-davies. He attempted suicide the night before his conviction and died several days later.
Keeler, who found herself thrust back into the spotlight in 1989 with the release of the film Scandal about the Profumo affair, once said: ‘Even a criminal has the right to a new life, but they made sure I did not have that. They never stopped calling me a prostitute. How can anyone live with that?
‘I took on the sins of everybody, of a generation really.’
Keeler, who married twice, was estranged from her first son, James Levermore.
Seymour, a business analyst who lives in Ireland, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I’m one of the least qualified people in the world to talk about my mum’s past, for the simple reason that I wasn’t around when the events took place.’
Geoffrey Robertson QC, who has long campaigned for Ward to be exonerated, said: ‘There was a cover-up by the legal establishment. We still haven’t seen the end of this.’