An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo (52 page)

Picture Section

Harold Macmillan with his Lord Chancellor, Kilmuir, leaving St Paul’s Cathedral in glossy silk hats in 1958. Discretion, conformity and restraint were valued in Establishment England. (Getty Images)

The Prime Minister in more vernacular mood at Earls Court motor show in 1957. Cheap little cars were a symbol of the jolly, complacent materialism and gimcrack modernity of 1957–64. (Getty Images)

Jack Profumo looking vital, eager and sleek at his Ministry of Aviation desk in 1953. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Valerie and Jack Profumo after their son David’s baptism in the Crypt Chapel of the House of Commons in 1956. (Mary Evans/Interfoto Agentur)

Cliveden, the Italianate show-place overlooking the Thames, where Bill Astor dispensed princely hospitality.(Getty Images)

Bronwen and Bill Astor in the grounds at Cliveden after their marriage in 1960. Their happiness was quenched and their lives were sullied by the events of 1963. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Bill Astor’s Cliveden jester, Stephen Ward – carefree, kindly, meddling and sensual. ‘He was massively indiscreet, and loved showing off right up to the end.’ (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Spring Cottage, Stephen Ward’s Cliveden hide-out, around the time that it was burgled and searched by journalists. His parties there were ‘innocent malarkey, swimming in the Thames, but nothing more’. (Getty Images)

The pudgy refugee and slum landlord Peter Rachman at his cluttered desk in his chaotic basement office in Bayswater. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

The house in Bryanston Mews West where Rachman kept Mandy Rice-Davies. Stephen Ward took over the tenancy after Rachman’s death. (Mirrorpix)

Sub-editors toiling in the
News of the World
newsroom in 1953. It was in newsrooms such as this that journalists raked up scandals, publicised slurs and pilloried the vulnerable. (Getty Images)

Hugh Cudlipp ensured that his newspapers were provocative in every issue and supremely confident of their own importance. They defied conventions, broke taboos, punctured pomposity and jeered at tradition. (Getty Images)