- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Pan Books; New edition edition (25 Jan 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330481673
- ISBN-13: 978-0330481670
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 88,522 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
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.
Review
'Proves that truth really can be stranger than fiction.' Daily Express; 'A compulsive, ancient mariner quality' The Observer
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fact or fiction?,
By nottingdale "colville" (london) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Truth at Last: My Story (Paperback)
At the centre of probably the biggest political sex scandal of the last century, Christine Keeler has a remarkable story to tell: street hustlers, cabinet ministers, political intrigue and sex feature in equal measures. Sadly the narrative lurches from the compelling (seamy 60s London, and interesting parallels with Monica Lewinsky) to the unbelievable (spying allegations dismissed out of hand as fantasy by leading experts). Perhaps her ghost writer, whose clunking prose at times leaves a lot to be desired, or her publisher, requested new revelations after so many years, and so many words written, on events which helped define an era?
25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting tidbits, but poorly written,
This review is from: Christine Keeler: The Truth at Last (Hardcover)
Before reading this book I had a lot more respect for Christine Keeler. I had always viewed her as a plucky adventuress, out for a good time, and somewhat over her head in political gamesmanship. I liked the image of Christine as a 60s icon - the girl with enough sexual charisma to bring down a government. There are revelations in the book, and interesting ones at that regarding her and Ward's involvement in espionage and the Government's strategy to use her as a red herring to mitigate the damage. As a historical record, it undoubtedly makes an important contribution. However the book is very poorly written, it's choppy and not very well structured, and it's whiney. While I don't doubt that Christine was set up, and paid the price for challenging her society's moral code, she was an adult, and she did make her own decisions as to those with whom she associated, and the nature of those associations. She has also obviously benefitted from her fame and notoriety - she has traveled, she has had magnificent opportunities for relationships and associations that she could otherwise never have dreamed. In this book she blames Ward, the Government, her notoriety, even those who have loved her, for her lifetime of apparent regret and frustration. She blames everyone but herself. I was left wanting to tell her to grow up, accept and learn from the past, thank God for the opportunities she's had (and perhaps discarded) and continue to be the icon I have admired for the past 40 years.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Who am I?,
By Strangerbird (United Kingdom.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Truth at Last: My Story (Paperback)
That Stephen Ward's conviction for 'living on immoral earnings' was a miscarriage of justice is not revelatory. Ludovic Kennedy has demonstrated that to have been clearly the fact.(Kennedy, L. 'The Trial of Stephen Ward' London 1987) But how much reliance can be placed on Keeler's other central assertion, put simply that 'Stephen was a spy'? One suspects that the truth is more complicated and considerably less exciting. But my interest in Christine Keeler's (ghost-written)autobiography does not so much concern the great affair of state in which she was one of the central players. The book is worth reading as an insight into post-war dysfunction in British society, by Keeler's time, the subject of major structural change. It is well known that the 1960s was a decade in which working-class youth burst on to the national scene in a frenzy of creativity, knocking the time-honoured stuffiness out of the Establishment. Christine Keeler undoubtedly helped in that process, and for that reason alone she will remain a 60s' icon. But, at another level altogether, Christine's story, quite apart from issues of morality, is that of a person with a totally absented sense of personal identity. That in a nutshell is her crisis. The book might just as well have been entitled 'Who am I?' There is no consistent pattern to her affairs. It is a tale about someone who tries every conceivable way of capturing a firm sense of who they are. One moment she is involved with a Cabinet Minister, the next with Lucky Gordon, a violent drug-pusher. When all else fails she turns the clock back several years and marries 'the boy next door'. In this sense too, therefore, Christine Keeler's life is a representation of a changing society, one in which working-class youth, hitherto people with few choices about where to go and what to do in life, are suddenly confronted with multiple opportunities. One effect can be, as in Keeler's case, a paroxysm of self-doubt and indecision.
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