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Famous Historic Figures’ Public Image vs the Reality of their Lives

Khalid Elhassan June 3, 2020 34 min

John Ford - The Searchers — John Wayne. Pintrest

12. The Scandal That Wrecked a Rising Star…

John Profumo and Christine Keeler. The Daily Express

In 1961, British politician John Profumo was the country’s Secretary of State for War and a rising star in the Conservative Party. Then his public image took a nosedive, after he met and had a brief fling with an aspiring model, nineteen-year-old Christine Keeler.

In and of itself, the affair was not a big deal – then as now, politicians having affairs were as common as sand on a beach. What transformed the affair into a scandal with far-reaching consequences, that destroyed Profumo’s public image and his career, was the coverup. When asked about his relationship with Keeler in the spring of 1963, Profumo told the House of Commons that there had been “no impropriety whatever“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.