Still elegant (and reading the Mail), woman at the centre of Stonehouse saga that rocked 1970s Britain
A LIFE of obscurity has long-suited Sheila Buckley, pictured here running errands in a quiet Hampshire market town.
Once, however, she was the glamorous young brunette whose love affair with rogue MP and Communist traitor John Stonehouse scandalised British politics.
Now Mrs Buckley is to be thrust back into the spotlight thanks to a major TV series about the Stonehouse case, and a true crime documentary, both airing this week.
The ITV drama, Stonehouse, stars Matthew Macfadyen as the politician who faked his death off a Miami beach in 1974, in the hope of starting a new life in Australia. His wife Barbara is played by the actor’s real-life spouse Keeley Hawes, and newcomer Emer Heatley – who bears a startling resemblance to the young Sheila – is his mistress.
The three-part series recreates Stonehouse’s rise to prominence in Harold Wilson’s government. It shows how, amid a swirl of rumours that he was in the pay of Czech spymasters, and with financial collapse looming, he copied the plot of the thriller The Day Of The Jackal in a bid to create a new identity and move halfway across the world. (He was only caught because Australian police believed he was Lord Lucan on the run in Melbourne.)
Sheila, who had been Stonehouse’s parliamentary secretary, remained loyal to her disgraced lover throughout the scandal, flyended ing out to meet him in Australia. The couple later married and had a son, before Stonehouse died in 1988, aged 62.
Today she lives alone in a £700,000 detached home in Romsey on the River Test. She is known to be a keen gardener and is understood to have worked as an accountant or book-keeper to support herself after losing Stonehouse, who was 21 years her senior.
She has rarely spoken of their relationship and does not appear in the documentary The Real Stonehouse, which traces the true story behind the drama.
One person who does feature is retired Metropolitan Police Detective Inspector David Townley, who speaks for the first time about the operation to repatriate Stonehouse and Sheila to London, where they faced multiple charges.
He recalls: ‘I thought [Sheila] was polite – a kind, gentle person who’d been mesmerised by Stonehouse and dragged into something she shouldn’t have got involved in. She up with [a suspended sentence of] two years in prison for being in love with someone. Stonehouse was a controlling person. She was young, attractive, and she clearly loved him very much.’
Stonehouse faced 21 counts of fraud, forgery and theft. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and declared criminally bankrupt to the tune of £800,000 (about £5.5 million today).
Stonehouse’s great-nephew and author of a book about the scandal, Julian Hayes, recalls that Sheila and Stonehouse’s life post-prison was ‘mundane and ordinary’.
M The Real Stonehouse will air at 9pm on ITV1 on January 5, and will be available on ITVX.