Christine Keeler, woman at the centre of Britain's biggest sex scandal, dies

By Costas Pitas

 

LONDON (Reuters) - Christine Keeler, the model and dancer whose liaisons with a British minister and a Soviet diplomat at the height of the Cold War shocked Britain and embroiled the government in a notorious political sex scandal, has died aged 75.

 

Keeler's relationship with married Minister of War John Profumo, whom she met, aged 19, while swimming naked at the grand Buckinghamshire estate of his colleague William Astor, shocked socially conservative Britain in the early 1960s.

 

Front-page revelations that she was also having an affair with a Soviet naval attache, Yevgeny Ivanov, titillated the public and shone a light on the social and sexual mores of Britain's secretive ruling establishment.

 

Profumo was forced to resign after lying to parliament about their relationship.

 

The political and diplomatic firestorm helped bring down the Conservative government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and the 1963 "Profumo affair" is still seen as a watershed moment that changed British attitudes to sex and class.

 

Keeler's son, Seymour Platt, told The Guardian newspaper she had died on Tuesday night after suffering for months from a form of lung disease. She had led a humble lifestyle after the scandal but never escaped the notoriety it brought her.

 

"There was a lot of good around Chris's rather tragic life, because there was a family around her that loved her," Platt was quoted as saying. "I think what happened to her back in the day was quite damaging."

 

The black-and-white photograph of a naked Keeler sitting astride an Arne Jacobsen chair remains the defining image of the lurid scandal that has been retold several times on screen and stage, including as a musical.

 

It even added an expression to the British lexicon.

 

At the trial of Stephen Ward, the man who brought Keeler and Profumo together, a fellow showgirl was told that another establishment figure denied having sex with her.

 

"Well, he would, wouldn't he?," responded Mandy Rice-Davies.

 

In later life, Keeler had regrets about how the scandal unfolded and said she had been a victim.

 

"I wish, that at that time, I had been older so that I would have been able to have answered or spoke up for myself and Stephen but I was only a young girl," she said.

 

(Reporting by Costas Pitas; Editing by Catherine Evans)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-12-6

 

 

Good Looking Girl in her day....

 

 

I lived in London when all of this was going on.  It takes me back.  Radio Caroline, the Shrimp etc

18 minutes ago, Gillyflower said:

I lived in London when all of this was going on.  It takes me back.  Radio Caroline, the Shrimp etc

 

You are showing your age! London was ahead of the pack in those days - was exciting times .

...sorry..but 19 isn't a 'young girl'.

11 hours ago, peterb17 said:

 

You are showing your age! London was ahead of the pack in those days - was exciting times .

You're quite right about the age!!  (you didn't have to say it.)   And you are right about London too.  I went to live in Paris after and it was deadly dull after the rip roaring life I had led.  You couldn't even give your boyfriend a peck on the cheek without being up for 'indecent' behaviour.  If a cop saw you that is.

It was a few years before i went to live in London ,but as a young lad i can remember wishing that i was "that chair"

Scandal with John Hurt, really good movie.

An unforgettable icon of an unforgettable era for those of us who were fortunate enough to have lived through Swinging Sixties. We shan't see its like again, unfortunately.

3 hours ago, Gillyflower said:

You're quite right about the age!!  (you didn't have to say it.)   And you are right about London too.  I went to live in Paris after and it was deadly dull after the rip roaring life I had led.  You couldn't even give your boyfriend a peck on the cheek without being up for 'indecent' behaviour.  If a cop saw you that is.

 

 

Gosh i I Left London to move,to Paris...managed 5 years and moved ...can’t compare it to London..., and I did not like French Food, awful...

 

small world eh....

16 hours ago, peterb17 said:

 

You are showing your age! London was ahead of the pack in those days - was exciting times .

I wasn't there so I don't know if it was actually exciting or if it was just that everywhere else was boring as a wet Sunday in the most boring village in Siberia in the middle of winter. Where I lived was so devoid of excitement I thought using an escalator was thrilling.

Anyway, I remember Keeler and the scandal and all that, but I was so young and innocent I didn't understand why it was a scandal .

My "hommage" ...