The Truth at Last: My Story [Paperback]

For Philip Larkin, sexual intercourse may have begun in 1963, but for many, particularly government ministers, spies and 19-year-old models such as Christine Keeler, it was already in full swing. Swingers of all political persuasion indulged in antics of all persuasions: heady stuff, but destined for scandal, and victims. Keeler, in this ghostwritten autobiography, makes very plain that she believes herself to have been made the biggest scapegoat for a scandal publicly about impropriety, but behind heavy doors about espionage. Already the author of several books on the affair, only now is she revealing her complete account of what occurred before and after she had sex with a government minister and a Russian spy in the same week. And it's not without irony that the publisher is Macmillan.

In a sense, it's hard to appreciate the anger Keeler still obviously harbours, but it must be even harder to be her. Beautiful perhaps beyond her means, despite the frenzy of free love her story is luridly, unflaggingly bleak. An abortion at 16, held captive and raped twice by an infatuated madman, shot at by a jealous lover, imprisoned for perjury, disowned by her mother and one of her sons, the rest of her life saw her bear a stigma that resulted in men thinking her an easy proposition, and society shunning her. The new truths are, essentially, that she became pregnant by Profumo, that M15 chief Roger Hollis, was, if not the Fifth Man, then "certainly in the top 10", and that Stephen Ward, the Svengali osteopath, was a Russian spy who tried to kill her. Her most damning verdict, though, is on Lord Denning, appointed to investigate the scandal, whom she claims ignored her evidence as part of an official cover-up operation that damned her as a prostitute and the affair as a sex rather than security issue. The official papers will remain locked up until 2046, and until then, Keeler's truth will appear both plausible and frustratingly unverifiable. Her decision not to let sleeping dogs lie--because they lie and lie, she says--resurrects a story of original sin that remains, in an era of sleaze, relentlessly beguiling, even if, as she concludes, "I have survived and possibly I should not hope for more than that." --David Vincent --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Proves that truth really can be stranger than fiction.' Daily Express; 'A compulsive, ancient mariner quality' The Observer

The updated edition of the full story behind this defining moment of the twentieth century In 1961, a beautiful 19-year-old girl had a short affair with the Minister for War, John Profumo. Within two years, this led to the downfall of Harold Macmillan's government - she had also been having an affair with a Russian diplomat (this was the height of the Cold War), and Profumo had lied to Parliament. But the social impact was greater than any political legacy: sex was now on everyone's lips, and the press had discovered that it could, and would, expose the private lives of public figures. The story that Christine Keeler, the woman at the epicentre of this scandal, tells reverses all our preconceptions of this near-legendary episode. The political and diplomatic ramifications of the affair and the activities of the circles in which she moved may well have been more far-reaching than ever imagined. But above all this is the life's journey of a woman whom history has refused to let go, of her enormous personal sacrifices, and of her unstinting resolve.

Christine Keeler, born in the Midlands, was a model of note in her teens - her portrait astride a chair by Lewis Morley has become iconic. Tried for alleged perjury after the death Steven Ward and briefly jailed, the story of her early life was adapted as the film Scandal. She now writes and presents for television, and lives in north London.