Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo
    Unavailable
    An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo
    Unavailable
    An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo
    Ebook564 pages8 hours

    An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo

    By Richard Davenport-Hines

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateDec 17, 2012
    ISBN9780007435869
    Unavailable
    An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo
    Author

    Richard Davenport-Hines

    Richard Davenport-Hinesis the acclaimed biographer of W. H. Auden and the Macmillan dynasty. He is also the author of Proust at the Majestic: The Last Days of the Author Whose Book Changed Paris and The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics. He is a regular contributor to the U.K. publications Literary Review, Sunday Telegraph, Spectator, and the Times Literary Supplement.

    Read more from Richard Davenport Hines

    Related to An English Affair

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Back To The Future

      Nov 12, 2019

      Back To The Future
      8 min read

    • Article

      All Hail The King

      Jan 12, 2022

      All Hail The King
      5 min read

    • Article

      Thirty Years Of Laughs

      Feb 9, 2022

      Thirty Years Of Laughs
      5 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Sep 20, 2023

      SIR: My mother, for one, was delighted that Gareth Neame chose Highclere Castle as the location for Downton Abbey (September issue). She was a teacher during the war, and her entire school was evacuated to Highclere. The awestruck reaction of a bunch

      6 min read

    • Article

      Gangster Bedtime Stories

      Jun 5, 2019

      Gangster Bedtime Stories
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Fiction No. 245

      Dec 15, 2019

      The Art of Fiction No. 245
      42 min read

    • Article

      Searching for Ms. Miller

      Oct 10, 2020

      Searching for Ms. Miller
      4 min read

    • Article

      Document

      Mar 23, 2023

      n"This book encapsulates everything I loved about Soho. It's about what was an underbelly of London, where everything came together - underground drinking places, an eccentric literary scene, sex, everything Soho represented at that time. I started w

      5 min read

    • Article

      Baking Through a Plague

      Jun 12, 2020

      Baking Through a Plague
      8 min read

    • Article

      My Alma Mater

      Jun 29, 2022

      My Alma Mater
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Other American History

      Oct 7, 2021

      The Other American History
      10 min read

    • Article

      Jeremy Thorpe's Crush On Me

      Mar 8, 2023

      This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Oxford Union, the debating society at Oxford University. I was successively Secretary, Librarian and President of the Union, when I was a student, back in the late 1960s. We were called ‘undergraduates' in

      3 min read

    • Article

      Projections of Life

      Jun 1, 2023

      Projections of Life
      14 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Jun 1, 2022

      Readers’ Letters
      5 min read

    • Article

      On the Oldest Road: U.S. 1, Robert Kramer, the Buick, and Me

      Nov 12, 2020

      The highway is a monument to the American lust for the hideous, the delight in ugliness for its own sake. The post On the Oldest Road: U.S. 1, Robert Kramer, the Buick, and Me appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Aug 22, 2022

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      Encounters

      May 13, 2021

      Encounters
      5 min read

    • Article

      Why Do We Fear Wolves?

      Dec 12, 2017

      Why Do We Fear Wolves?
      9 min read

    • Article

      Cathi Unsworth

      Jan 7, 2021

      Cathi Unsworth
      6 min read

    • Article

      Casting The Runes

      Feb 25, 2021

      “I was interested in magic and witchcraft and things like that from an early age,” says Dave Arthur. “Twelve or so. Dennis Wheatley’s novels… I read those. The Devil Rides Out, To the Devil a Daughter, The Ka of Gifford Hillary. Occult novels fascina

      19 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Nov 17, 2021

      SIR: I must applaud William Cook (Who was Blackie the donkey?, October issue) in maintaining the tradition of never allowing the facts to mar a good story. Don Mackay arrived at Jarandilla de la Vera first, not in the wake of Hugh Whittow of the Sun.

      5 min read

    • Article

      In The Thick Of It

      Aug 2, 2022

      Not a few readers first encountered Stewart Brand in the opening scene of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe’s whirligig chronicle of the Merry Pranksters, Bay Area refugees from the humdrum who in the early 1960s coalesced around novelist Ke

      3 min read

    Reviews for An English Affair

    4/5

    21 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Not just a history of the Profumo affair but more a fascinating picture of the British ruling class at a time of impending great change in British society. It shows just how much we are drifting back towards those times now.
    • 4/5
      It is now fifty years since John Profumo resigned both as a government Minister and as MP for Stratford upon Avon as a consequence of his involvement with Christine Keeler. His resignation had become unavoidable, not so much because he had had extra-marital sex with Keeler but because he had earlier made a personal statement to the House of Commons denying that he had done so. That is probably the only aspect of the "received" version of the story that is beyond dispute.Profumo's position in the Government was as Minister for War, and his dalliance with Keeler occurred during the months culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world came to the brink of nuclear war. What weakened Profumo's position further was the revelation that, during her affair with Profumo, Keeler had also been sleeping with Yevgeni Ivanov. Just a year earlier Tam Galbraith, one of the Civil Admiralty Lords, had had to resign because of public suspicion of impropriety behind letters that he had sent to John Vassall, an official in the Admiralty who was subsequently convicted of espionage. Against that context the perception that a Minister of State might be sharing a mistress with a Soviet military attache was unacceptably damaging.The role of villain of the piece, however, fell not to Profumo, nor even to Keeler, but to Stephen Ward who was publicly vilified as a procurer of prostitues and a pimp of the most unwholesome variety. Following Profumo's resignation Ward was prosecuted for living off immoral earnings. Lord Denning's official report into the "Profumo Affair" (which was certainly an engaging and fascinating read in itself) went out if its way to pillory Ward and poison his reputation. Ward was never convicted - shortly before the end of the trial he took an overdose, dying in agiony in hospital three days later.Davenport-Hines has revisited the affair, and in his deeply-researched book he paints a clear context against which all the events took plae. He also challenges the popular understanding of what actually did happen. Ask anyone about the Profumo Affair and they will say that one of the key factors was Keeler sleeping with Ivnov, but the only evidence that this ever happened was a sloppily written newspaper article by Keeler, already known as a compulsive liar, for which she was paid £1,000, (a huge fortune in 1962). Ivanov himself was never questioned about Keeler, and throughout the investigations of goings-on no-one else ever referred to Ibvanov sleeping with Keeler.The portrayal of Ward as a procurer and pimp is also very questionable. It is clear that he was an unwholesome character, but it is equally clear that the police case against him was manufactured from start to finish, and the fact that he was prosecuted at all was an utter miscarriage of justice.Davenport-Hines shows very clearly how the Profumo Affair rocked British society. The Press used the fraying of the Establishment to secure its seemingly impregnable position which was only slightly challenged by the recent Leveson Inquiry. Concerted campaigns by the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express (then a left-wing leaning paper) certainly perverted the course of justice by compromising Ward's defence. I found this book most enjoyable and enlightening. I can't say whether the truth lies with Denning's version of with Davenport-Hines's reappraisal, but I do know that a good dose of scandal never goes amiss.
    • 4/5
      An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo I think you'll either love this book or hate it. If you are English and understand the class system you have a chance of finding out. If you are not English thus whole thing may mystify you.Meticulously documented and annotated throughout, the author sets the scene chapter by chapter before the final drama unfolds. Without the preceding chapters that give the prevailing mores of the times in great detail, I think the scale of this scandal would be lost when looked at from the viewpoint of today's permissive times. The context is everything when dealing with historic events. What shattered the world a hundred years ago would not raise an eyebrow today.Example: In relation prosecuting Ward for living off immoral earnings, which was a put-up job, it was inconceivable at the time that either Christine Keeler or Mandy Rice-Davies could be self actualising females who could decide for themselves who they had sex with. Women having sex outside of marriage with different men at that time could only be, by definition, prostitutes.Rife with contradiction between the Establishment's stated morality and those of its ranking members, the ease of outright lies and their acceptance at all levels within the Establishment, the contrasts could not be clearer. Hypocrisy was and still is the hub of British class culture. The corrupt self-righteous newspapers calling for the blood of minor transgressors still rule the day in that God-forsaken land.Similar in context to the book about the Kray Twins that I read recently, another lid lifted of the filth and depravity of those who make the rules.
    • 5/5
      A fascinating account,as promised on the cover, of the relationship between sex, class & power in the time of the Profumo scandal.Davenport-Hines, despite swallowing a dictionary, has done his research to show how an age of class-bound deference moved into a sceptical swinging Britain. And shockingly reveals the close-ties between high power and a corrupt police force, where witnesses were threatened with trumped-up charges if they told the truth rather than towing the official line.