Josh Layton
Published November 28, 2025 4:45pm
Updated November 28, 2025 4:51pm
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John Profumo was embroiled in a national scandal involving sleaze and national security after it emerged that he had had an affair with young model Christine Keeler (Credits: Mirrorpix)
John Profumo derided lover Christine Keeler as ‘simple’ as he admitted a ‘sordid’ affair with her, newly released files show.
The former cabinet minister confided that he had sexual relations with the 19-year-old ‘three or four times’ in a mutual acquaintance’s apartment behind his wife Valerie Hobson’s back.
Having been assured by Lord Denning, who was producing a government report about the scandal, that he was speaking in the ‘strictest confidence’, he described the aspiring model as ‘ill-educated’.
The senior judge had been conducting an inquiry into a sex, politics and espionage saga that has captured the public imagination for more than six decades and been dramatised by the BBC.
National security was a key theme as Keeler had also been in a relationship with a Soviet naval attaché and spy named Eugene Ivanov.
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Profumo was forced to resign as Secretary of State for War in 1963 after admitting that he had lied to the House of Commons when denying any ‘impropriety’ with her.
Christine Keeler was the young model at the centre of the scandal which led to the political downfall of John Profumo (Picture: Sharok Hatami/Shutterstock)
‘When intimacy first occurred’
When questioned by Denning about his first meeting with Keeler at a party two years earlier, he replied: ‘I did take her into the other room and I have no doubt I put my arm around her, so I was alone with her and I will say I was conscious of finding her very attractive.’
The encounter took place at high society meeting place Cliveden House in Berkshire during the Cold War, when guests including Keeler were cooling off in and around a swimming pool.
Showing his soft line of questioning, Profumo asks Denning if he wants him to go on, to which Denning replies: ‘I think I have got the picture of it.’
The former minister later implies that he entered into a sexual relationship with Keeler at society osteopath Stephen Ward’s Wimpole Mews flat in Marylebone, where Keeler was a tenant.
‘This led at least to my finding an occasion within a few days when I was able to be alone with her, and that was when intimacy first occurred,’ Profumo said.
John Profumo leaves his home in Regent’s Park, London, in 1963 (Picture: PA)
‘A little embarrassing’
Profumo, who was 46 at the time he met the showgirl, claimed that this was ‘always at the flat, and if I may say so I do not believe this occurred more than three or four times altogether.’
He continues that he had to call round when Keeler was alone and describes her as ‘singularly simple’, relating that she had not seen London landmarks like Parliament until he drove her round in a Mini Minor.
‘I do not think she had seen Parliament,’ Profumo said.
He also talked of being ‘warned off’ by cabinet secretary Sir Norman Brook, who in Profumo’s recollection told him: ‘It is a little embarrassing, but I believe you know whom I mean by Dr Ward who lives in a little mews house where there is a young lady.
Society osteopath Stephen Ward is shown leaving a court building as a crowd watches on(Picture: PA)
‘We are not sure that he is not a security risk, and I thought I should warn you, as I know you know him.
‘He has a young man called Mr. Ivanov about the place, whom we believe to be a go-between, or he may well be, and we are watching this.’
Profumo interpreted the approach as telling him, ‘look here, we know you have been going with this girl.’
But he said that he had subsequently learnt that he had been warned because, ‘Ward had told the security people that he had met me.’
John Profumo and his wife Valerie Hobson from whom he initially concealed his affair Christine Keeler according to archive material (Picture: Getty)
‘She had no sort of mind’
Profumo also portrayed Keeler as being too ‘ill-educated’ to be able to prize national security secrets out of him.
He said: ‘I can only tell you that this young lady was pretty enough and desirable enough, but she had less understanding about anything that goes on than anybody I have ever met.
‘In fact she was ill-educated, she had no sort of mind.’
In the transcript, newly released at the National Archives, the ex-politician goes on to say that he cut ties with Ward and Keeler after the warning and went on to regard it as a ‘rather sordid fleeting affair’, submerged by other ‘important things’ on his mind.
The affair would hit the tabloids after Profumo failed to repress the story through legal threats, including in the News of the World’s exclusive, ‘The Confessions of Christine’.
Christine Keeler has been defended by commentators who say she was a victim of John Profumo’s sense of entitlement (Picture: Shutterstock)
‘Sad reflection of entitlement’
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan resigned six months later after Profumo’s exit as the fallout from the scandal dented his ability to govern.
Ward took his own life in July 1963, three days before he was due to be sentenced for making a profit from immoral earnings.
Vanessa Holburn, author of The Profumo Affair, told Metro: ‘The files show what little regard Profumo had for Christine, which is a sad reflection of his sense of entitlement and perhaps the times they were living in.
‘While she may not have been lucky enough to enjoy the education life had afforded him, I don’t think Christine was stupid as he liked to suggest.
‘The comments paint Profumo in a bad light, not least because they show he actively pursued Christine, and potentially knew the risks he was taking professionally but went ahead with a relationship anyway.
Christine Keeler strove to shrug off the cloud that the national scandal cast over her later on in life (Picture: H Wallace/Daily Mail/Shutterstock)
‘However casually Profumo frames the affair, he was a married man in his 40s, in a position of power, who was happy to sleep with a teenage girl, and to lie to parliament about it in an attempt to save his own career. He was the wrongdoer, but it was Christine, and Stephen Ward, who paid the price.’
Lord Denning concluded that there had been no security breach in the report, which has been widely criticised as a whitewash.
Keeler, who later in life worked in various menial jobs and changed her surname to distance herself from the affair, died in December 2017.
Darren Lilleker, professor of political communication at Bournemouth University, said: ‘The transcript is an interesting insight, mostly into the attitudes of Profumo and probably many men in politics during that era.
‘He was public school educated and a member of the Bullingdon Club I believe, so the self-importance he shows was probably a reflection of his character and upbringing. The way he speaks indicates he viewed Keeler purely as a sexual object, likely too stupid to be credible and definitely not possessing the intellect to manipulate him.
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‘It seems he just saw her as someone he could use for cheap personal gratification. He never considered why she would be interested in a relationship with him, a 45-year-old man
‘Whether she was ever a security risk is unknown but it is very possible that she groomed him, playing to his chauvinism and weaknesses.
‘Despite his portrayal in screen dramas I always thought of him as a fairly reprehensible character and this confirms it.
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