Rethinking Christine Keeler

Although the five non-fiction books

I’ve had published seem on the surface very different, I’ve noticed a common theme, writes subscriber

Vanessa Holburn. There’s always an underdog and often an accompanying campaign to see the right thing done, however much time has passed. But it’s never deliberate. I just seem to stumble upon controversy!

When I first started writing The Profumo Affair it was to run within a series covering British scandals that my publisher Pen & Sword has established. But the more I researched, the more I realised that far from being a titillating story about the hedonistic 1960s and the glamorous life of a ‘showgirl’, the political scandal was in fact a very modern tale of corruption and coercive relationships. It meant my book was never going to be just a simple re-telling.

In this book the underdog is Christine Keeler, and the campaign is the call for her to be posthumously pardoned for the perjury conviction she went to jail for that her son Seymour Platt is championing.

After I introduce the main players in the drama and the timeline of events, I move on to examining the backdrop of 1960s Britain – and the restrictions that brought for some people more than others. The fallout from the affair between the married Minister for War John Profumo and a model less than half his age went far beyond their personal lives. Profumo’s deceit, and perhaps more so, the establishment’s perceived attempts to cover up what might have been a serious national security risk rocked the country and its government. As it should.

In a story that may sound all too familiar to today’s readers, the eventual inquiry was regarded by many as a whitewash, with government officials and the police force excused. An unprecedented closure of the archives means it’s hard not to wonder exactly what, or who, was being protected – and remains so six decades later.

I hope my book helps people to see Keeler in a far more favourable light than ever before, and to wonder if she was not the real victim here all along.

The Profumo Affair by Vanessa Holburn is published by Pen & Sword Books Ltd