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An English Affair: Sex, Class And Power In The Age Of Profumo (2013)

by Richard Davenport-Hines(Favorite Author)

3.74 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0007435843 (ISBN13: 9780007435845)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

HarperCollins Publishers

review 1: I have tried to concoct a summary of the story, and it comes down to this: A Cabinet Minister (Profumo) lies about an affair he is having, is caught in the lie, and resigns. An associate (Ward) of the lady in question (Keeler), in an attempt by the government to discredit him, is subject to a substantial police inquiry, is tried for several crimes, and found guilty of only two minor ones (indeed, crimes that are no longer illegal*). Such, however, is the seedy nature of the trial that Ward is "cut" by his so-called friends and clients, and kills himself. Keeler is found guilty of perjuring herself (under police pressure) in a related case, and is sentenced to nine months' jail.And that, in 345 pages plus acknowledgements, notes and index, is that. "Much Ado About Noth... moreing"? Perhaps.It is the openly sexual nature of the major protagonists, and the involvement (albeit almost insignificantly) of a member of the Soviet embassy (Ivanov), giving an air of intrigue, that lead to a moral panic storm in the gutter press. The government dithers in its handling of Profumo, but is ruthless in its prosecution of the mostly blameless Ward. The affair may been a factor in the Conservative government's defeat the following year (1964). It brought about a feeling in Britain, so says the author, that authority and the ruling-classes were not to be trusted. Not, stresses the author, that the Labour party were any better.Despite some interesting aspects, it didn't feel like an affair of such importance as to deserve a tome of such weight. Perhaps if you had lived through it, or currently live in England, it may carry more pertinence. Certainly the structure, with 240 pages essentially of back-story, did not help its readability. Some of these earlier chapters were boring, particularly the one regarding real estate.Have your dictionary handy unless you know: quondam, demimondaines, derogation, sedulous, purblind, nugatory, desuetude, captious, mulcted, spiv and termagant.* If you introduce a man to a woman aged 16 to 21, and they subsequently have intercourse, you have committed a crime!
review 2: You know about the Profumo Affair: pimping, prostitution, spying, sordid perversion and black lies. Well, the last is true anyway. The rest is media - or police - invention, according to Davenport-Hines's rivetting account of both the period and the affair. The scene is set with exemplary wit and insight, while each of the players receives a decent biography and a fairminded appraisal of their actions and motives. Perhaps the book's greatest strength is less in the account of the events themselves, by turns exciting and unsettling as that is, than its discussion of the mores and attitudes of late fifties Britain that led to the ghastly mess, which Davenport-Hines argues with some conviction effectively changed the entire political scene. (Indeed, he even notes that the scandal arguably triggered the gradual transformation of the Conservative party from that of Macmillan to that of Thatcher, as the Establishment gave way to meritocracy and managerialism.)What I find most intriguing is where the author stands on the effects of Profumo. At times, he seems to have a remarkable sympathy for the traditions of deference, patriotic service and the discreet exercise of authority, all of which suffered a death blow. Profumo, he seems to say, may have been an incorrigible philanderer but that was his private business, and in all other respects he was a competent, well-liked if unremarkable minister. (Though less appealing as a husband: his unfortunate but not unobservant wife, the former actress Valerie Hobson, once lamented of his tailoring, "surely there must be some way of concealing your penis".) Yet it was the self-serving or shortsighted actions of respectable, quietly "competent" Establishment figures that allowed his brief relationship with Christine Keeler to blow up in the way it did. Most of all, Davenport-Hines appears to despise Wilson's Labour party for capitalising on the story while failing to offer anything superior to address the inadequacies of the Old Boy's Network that ran the country.Of the remaining key figures, Stephen Ward is clearly the most tragic, regardless of his personality flaws, Keeler an abused, ill-educated and badly led young girl in search only of a good time (although ultimately a product of unfortunate circumstances), Rice-Davies is a mere secondary and Bill Astor appears to be an unwitting bystander and hapless victim, although given that the author was given access to a number of his private papers by Astor's family, perhaps this reading was understandably sympathetic. Perhaps the lowest are the various newspaper proprietors, editors and journalists and their equally unprincipled counterparts in the legal profession. Davenport-Hines laments that Profumo spelt the end of privacy and the wholesale rush towards notoriety as celebrity, under the pretence of embracing 'modernity'.If you've read any popular histories of Britain in the fifties and sixties, this book would make an ideal accompaniment. Not a pretty tale, but it is effectively delivered. less

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