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John Profumo and Christine Keeler became household names – for the wrong reasons. Their highly publicized affair is still talked about up to this day.
John Profumo had to end his career in 1963 after a relationship with model Christine Keeler became public in a scandal known as the ‘Profumo affair.’
The British Brigadier and politician was a part of the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan.
He had served as a Member of Parliament (MP), Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Secretary of State for War, and many other important positions.
The affair is so famous that it has often been portrayed in popular culture, such as the 1989 film Scandal, the 2013 stage musical Stephen Ward the Musical, the 2019 BBC mini-series The Trial of Christine Keeler, and the Netflix series The Crown.
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John Profumo And Christine Keeler Relationship: Affair And Scandal Explained
John Profumo met Christine Keeler, a 19-year-old model, at a Party at Cliveden, home of Viscount Astor, in July 1961. He was 46 at the time.
The two began a sexual relationship. Since Keeler had also had similar relations with the senior naval attaché Yevgeny Ivanov, the case took on a national-security dimension.
In December 1962, an unrelated shooting incident in London involving two other men associated with Keeler threw the light on Keeler’s affairs with Profumo and Ivanov.
In March 1963, Labour MP George Wigg referred the case to the House of Commons, linking Profumo with Keeler.
Profumo initially admitted knowing Keeler but denied any “impropriety” in their relationship.
Later in June that year, he was forced to admit that he had lied to the House, an unforgivable offense in British politics at the time.
He resigned from office and the Privy Council and confessed his wrongdoings to his wife, Valerie Hobson, and then to the public.
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Hobson stood by him despite the scandal, whereas Profumo maintained total silence on the matter for the rest of his life.
Likewise, Keeler had two short-lived marriages: James Levermore (m. 1965–1966) and Anthony Platt (m. 1971–1972) and had a son named Seymour Platt with the latter.
The scandal, one of the biggest in British politics, rocked the Conservative government. It was considered one of the reasons for its defeat by the Labour Party in the 1964 election.
Meet John Profumo Family, Wife, & Kids
John Dennis Profumo was born on January 30, 1915, in Kensington, London, England, to his parents, Martha Thom Walker and Albert Profumo.
His Father, who died in 1940, was a diplomat and barrister of Italian ancestry. He owned much of the Provident Life Association of London.
John attended Harrow School and Brasenose College in Oxford. He had a sister named Mary Ainslie Balfour.
He married Valerie Hobson in 1954 and stayed together until her demise in 1998 at 81.
Hobson was a British Actress whose career spanned from the 1930s to the 1950s and involved films such as Bride of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London, Great Expectations, and Kind Hearts and Coronets.
She was previously married to film producer Anthony Havelock-Allan (m. 1939–1952), with whom she shared a late son Simon Anthony Clerveaux Havelock-Allan (1944-1991), and judge Mark Havelock-Allan (b. 1951).
Likewise, Hobson had her youngest child, author David Profumo (b. 1955), with John.
David later wrote Bringing the House Down: A Family Memoir (2006) about his dad’s scandal, which mentions that his parents did not tell him anything about the scandal and that he learned of it from another boy at school.
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