Christine Keeler obituary

Christine Keeler obituary
There were many victims of the Profumo affair, the sex and spying scandal that dominated the headlines in 1963, contributed to the resignation of the then prime minister, Harold Macmillan, soon afterwards, and still looms disproportionately large in the history of modern Britain. High on any list of those who suffered, and arguably at the very top, was Christine Keeler, who has died aged 75.

She was the showgirl – she preferred to call herself a model, while others labelled her a prostitute – whose simultaneous sexual liaisons in July 1961 with the British secretary for war, John Profumo, and the Soviet attaché Yevgeny Ivanov, lay at the heart of the scandal. A photograph taken at the time, of a young, alluring, but vulnerable Keeler, posing naked on a back-to-front Arne Jacobsen chair, has become one of the enduring symbols of the era.


She spent much of the rest of her life after 1963 bemoaning – in countless interviews and several volumes of autobiography, each more lurid than the last – her inability to escape the shadow of the affair. “It’s been a misery for me, living with Christine Keeler,” she said when her “definitive account” was published in 2001 (the volume was revised in 2012, with the claim, “Now Profumo is dead I can finally reveal the truth”). Yet she never appeared to really want to put it behind her. She would approach journalists and publishers repeatedly, offering to sell them another new angle on the story.


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The 2001 book, for example, contained new allegations that she had been pregnant with Profumo’s child but had been pushed into having an abortion. These were dismissed by those close to the disgraced minister who, in contrast to Keeler, sought rehabilitation by public silence and good works in the East End of London before his death in 2006. He was, of course, a wealthy man who could afford such a stance. Keeler was habitually short of cash and could not manage the luxury of just lying low.

She made a second major claim in the 2001 book. Stephen Ward, the osteopath who introduced her and other girls from the wrong side of the tracks to aristocrats and leading figures in the late 1950s and early 60s, had been, she revealed, a Soviet agent who had tried to murder her. “I don’t know,” she said, “if he was the fourth man, or the fifth … but he was certainly in the top 10.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/05/christine-keeler-obituary

'Profumo affair' model Christine Keeler dies aged 75
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42245839

Profumo sex scandal showgirl Christine Keeler dies aged 75
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/profumo-sex-scandal-showgirl-christine-11646003

Christine Keeler, model at the centre of the Profumo affair, dies aged 75
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/05/christine-keeler-model-centre-profumo-affair-dies-aged-75/

Christine Keeler: A life of sex and intrigue
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/christine-keeler-a-life-of-sex-and-intrigue-1-8894527

Christine Keeler, ex-showgirl at centre of Profumo scandal, dies
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/christine-keeler-exshowgirl-at-centre-of-profumo-scandal-dies-36382445.html

Profumo Affair Christine Keeler Dead At Age 75 After Long Illness
https://weekfacts.com/2017/12/profumo-affair-christine-keeler-dead-at-age-75-after-long-illness/