Cliveden, the country house that’s a magnet for scandal
The sultry night of July 8 1961, when Christine Keeler’s naked form emerged, lit only by moonlight, from the swimming pool in Cliveden, was the first act in a drama that would bring down a government and change the course of British history. The apparent ménage à trois between John Profumo, the minister of war, a Soviet spy and a “good-time girl” at the height of the Cold War made Cliveden synonymous with scandal in the collective consciousness of an entire generation.
But the outraged headlines and lurid scoops of the Profumo Affair – as it came to be known – were nothing new. During its dawn in the 1660s as much as its twilight in the 1960s, Cliveden was an emblem of elite misbehaviour and intrigue. Indeed, the 350-year history of the house began when a powerful politician decided to build a secluded mansion in which to enjoy his affair with an ambitious courtesan not much older than Keeler had been when she stayed there.
The courtesan was Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury, and the politician George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, a childhood friend of Charles II and one of the wealthiest men in England. When he bought Cliveden in the 1660s, it comprised two modest hunting lodges set within 400 acres of land. Over the following decade he transformed it, constructing a magnificent house as a monument to his scandalous affair with the countess. Cliveden was thus conceived as an enclave for hunting and hedonism, depicted for all time by Alexander Pope as “the bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love”.
In the 300 years between the Countess and Keeler, the house was occupied by a succession of remarkable women: Elizabeth Villiers, an intellectual who brokered the rise and fall of governments; Augusta of Saxe-gotha, a minor German royal who was robbed of becoming queen of England by the sudden death of her husband; Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, the glittering society hostess turned political campaigner; and Nancy Astor, who became the first woman to take a seat in parliament.
It was under Astor’s guidance that Cliveden became the very heart of British social, political and literary life. George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells, FD Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin and Rudyard Kipling are just some of the eclectic mix of luminaries Nancy hosted. Cliveden also garnered its fare share of controversy when the Astors and their friends were vilified as Nazi sympathisers, immortalised in the popular press as the “Cliveden Set”.
In March 1963, as the Profumo scandal was beginning to unfold, Harold Macmillan wrote in his diary: “The old ‘Cliveden Set’ was disastrous politically. The new ‘Cliveden Set’ is said to be equally disastrous morally.” This new “Cliveden Set”, of course, gave birth to the Profumo Affair; two days after they were first introduced at Cliveden, Profumo tracked Keeler down and arranged to meet her. It marked the beginning of a tepid, halfhearted liaison, which Keeler – who once cooked them sausages before they had sex in front of the television – described as “a very, very wellmannered screw of convenience”.
Keeler was simply one of many protagonists in Cliveden’s seductive story. From the 17th century onwards, it has been the epicentre of scandals and political plots that have sent shock waves through the nation. From a distance of more than 50 years, many elements of the Profumo Affair that made the story scandalous to the pre-sexual revolution audience of the early 1960s would no longer shock.
But, now we’ve revamped it as a five-star hotel, who knows what scandal will unfold next around Cliveden’s iconic swimming pool?
‘Cliveden became the very heart of British social, political and literary life’