My battle to clear Christine Keeler’s name

This July will mark 60 years since the beginning of the chapter in our nation’s history known as the ‘Profumo scandal.’ It was this unhappy episode in which my mother Christine Sloane, formerly Christine Keeler, had a starring role, and is credited with the fall of Harold Macmillan’s government.

The story of that affair is well known: Chris met John Profumo, the secretary of state for war, at a summer pool party at Cliveden. She found herself the focus of the world’s press attention two years later when her relationship with the Tory MP became public knowledge. She had also briefly been with a Soviet called Yevgeny Ivanov, prompting feverish claims that she had been passing him British intelligence from Profumo. 

What is less well known, however, is the consequences for Chris after being splashed across papers around the world. Her name, deeply tainted, ensured that she was the innocent victim of a subsequent, grave miscarriage of justice.