Stephen Ward

And it's important to note that she's sort of good looking and impressionable.

So our next player, Stephen Ward, born in 1912 in Hertfordshire, the son of a vicar.

He attended the public school Cantford in Dorset.

And in his 30s, he trained as an osteopath in the US.

I've taken quite a bit of it from the Denning report, which is so there was this judge, Lord Denning, who after this all happened, the government commissioned him to write a report basically on what is.

sort of like burn after reading style like what the fuck actually went on here because it's it's really insane like it's sort of so much of it is like it's much less important what actually happened versus what people think might have happened um and uh and so yeah lord denning this incredibly like fusty old man writes in just just a very funny way about all this stuff So I've taken this from Denning Report.

The story must start with Stephen Ward, age 50, the son of a clergyman.

By profession, he was an osteopath with consulting rooms at 38 Devonshire Street, West 1.

who had an affair with a dancer, a showgirl, sometimes called Christine Keeler.

You have Stephen Ward, the osteopath and portrait artist who was moving in high society circles, and it was he that introduced John Profumo to Christine Keeler.

Uh, and you also, as you mentioned, have Eugene Ivanov, the, uh, Soviet Naval attache, who's really, um, you know, he's really, uh, an intelligence officer, uh, for, um, the Soviet Union and, uh, Yeah, I mean, there's so many ingredients to this story, and probably time doesn't allow me to sort of, you know, go through the whole story.

But in terms of MI5 involvement, actually, the truth is, the files show that MI5 involvement in this was limited.

I know it's something that has been played up quite a lot before, uh, particularly with Stephen Ward.

So, um, I think people have some people, some commentators, maybe it's come across in some films that, uh, Steve, you know, there's impressions being given that perhaps Stephen Ward was working for MI5 and then sort of dropped by them and left in the lurch by them.

But I think.

The reality is a bit different to this, actually.

And to this day, the Profumo affair is the one that people still talk about.

Profumo met Keeler at a party organized by the Society osteopath Stephen Ward and had a brief affair with her, despite being married to actress Valerie Hobson.

Keeler was at the time close friends with Mandy Rice Davis, whose vivacity and ready wit brought an even greater spotlight on the affair.

The scandal really developed when news of the affair spread, coupled with the revelation that Keeler was also seeing Yevgeny Ivanov, a naval attaché at the Soviet embassy.