As spy thrillers go, the story of John Stonehouse, the British politician who vanished whereas swimming within the sea off Miami within the early Nineteen Seventies, is up there with the very best of them.
The one hint left by the Labour MP for Walsall North was a pile of neatly folded garments in a beachside cabana subsequent to his luxurious lodge.
Theories quickly abounded about what had occurred to the married father-of-three; it was stated he had suffered a coronary heart assault and drowned or been eaten by a shark or, even, been kidnapped by the Mafia.
Because the hearsay mill floor on, murky particulars surfaced about his enterprise pursuits and personal life. However — as would develop into clear when he was found alive and properly 5 weeks later — Stonehouse, a high-flying minister in Harold Wilson’s authorities, had faked his personal demise on November 20, 1974, coming ashore additional alongside the Florida coast and becoming garments he had left earlier at one other lodge earlier than fleeing to Australia underneath a false id.
A 3-part ITV drama starring Matthew Macfadyen as Stonehouse and his real-life spouse Keeley Hawes as his onscreen partner will retell the story of the late MP’s disappearance
His hapless try to start out a brand new life together with his mistress, whereas leaving his spouse and youngsters to consider he was useless was, unquestionably, one of the crucial surreal chapters in British political historical past and one which, almost half a century on, has come again to hang-out them.
For, subsequent week, a brand new three-part ITV drama starring Matthew Macfadyen as Stonehouse and his real-life spouse Keeley Hawes as his onscreen partner will retell the extraordinary story of the late MP’s Reggie Perrin-style disappearance. However with three totally different books written about Stonehouse lately, together with one by his personal daughter, recollections round this jaw-dropping saga — because the saying now goes — fluctuate.
Was Stonehouse, as is now largely accepted by historians, a spy for the Czech Secret Service?
Or did he merely vanish within the midst of some type of nervous breakdown after a collection of doubtful enterprise offers and an affair together with his secretary?
The Mail spoke to those that have intimate data of the scandal and it appears not everyone seems to be pleased with the model of occasions because of be performed out on our screens from Monday — notably one in every of his daughters. ‘I am disgusted with ITV,’ says 71-year-old Julia Stonehouse, the writer of John Stonehouse, My Father: The True Story Of The Runaway MP.
Theories quickly abounded about what had occurred to the married father-of-three; it was stated he had suffered a coronary heart assault and drowned or been eaten by a shark or, even, been kidnapped by the Mafia
Regardless of early conferences with scriptwriter John Preston, the writer of the e book A Very English Scandal, about disgraced Liberal chief Jeremy Thorpe, which was tailored for an acclaimed 2018 TV drama, starring Hugh Grant, she has not collaborated on the ITV manufacturing about her father.
She describes the forthcoming Stonehouse drama as ‘exploitative’, saying it has left her long-suffering 91-year-old mom — the MP’s ex-wife Barbara — ‘livid’.
She provides: ‘It is emotionally damaging to us. It is emotionally abusive to the household. It is all the time been about cash. I am completely livid. So is my mom. So is my complete household.
‘I hope Keeley [Hawes] and that bloke she’s married to are happy with themselves.’
Julia denies that her ‘fantastic’ father was a spy and is adamant a psychological breakdown, hastened by his dependancy to pharmaceuticals for nervousness and insomnia, lay behind his makes an attempt to embark on a brand new life overseas together with his a lot youthful secretary, Sheila Buckley.
‘No one knew however inside his head he was silently exploding’, writes Julia in her e book. Tossing a spanner into the literary works, nevertheless, is Stonehouse’s great-nephew, Julian Hayes, who tells a fairly totally different story.
His e book, Stonehouse: Cupboard Minister, Fraudster, Spy, paints an image of Stonehouse as a ‘callous’ and greedy particular person who faked his personal demise after a string of catastrophic and fraudulent enterprise failures.
Hayes’s father Michael, an impressionable trainee solicitor on the time of the scandal, was unwittingly dragged into the fray by his uncle after aiding him together with his enterprise affairs and later gave proof towards him in court docket.
In what’s described because the ‘definitive biography’, Hayes, 57, a legal barrister, particulars how he unearthed secret experiences in archives in Prague which, he says, show past all affordable doubt that on the top of the Chilly Struggle, Stonehouse was a spy within the pay of the Czech safety companies.
‘I can perceive why Julia desires to attempt to protect his reminiscence,’ Hayes says. ‘She desires to guard what she will be able to. However sadly it blinds her to issues that are not terribly palatable from her viewpoint.’
The Mail spoke to those that have intimate data of the scandal and it appears not everyone seems to be pleased with the model of occasions because of be performed out on our screens from Monday
Including additional grist to the Stonehouse mill is a 3rd e book, Agent Tornado: John Stonehouse And The Scandal That Gripped The Nation, which portrays Stonehouse as a ‘serial betrayer’ and a Soviet Bloc ‘spy’. It’s described by its authors, Philip Augur and Keely Winstone, because the ‘solely neutral, completely researched account of the entire Stonehouse story’.
‘Stonehouse was an especially charismatic and harmful man,’ Keely Winstone tells me. ‘He confirmed no regret. It will likely be odd if ITV have made this right into a jaunty story, as he wasn’t a really good man.’
In the meantime, Stonehouse’s widow, his former secretary and mistress Sheila Buckley, has additionally given the Mail her damning verdict on the approaching ITV drama, likening it to a ‘fairy story’. Sheila, who was 21 years youthful than Stonehouse, finally grew to become his spouse and the mom of his fourth baby.
‘It is only a tissue of lies most of it, all the brand new stuff. There’s hardly any accuracy in it in any respect,’ she says, talking from her indifferent home in a quiet cul-de-sac close to Southampton. Now 76, Sheila — who was simply 22 when she first met Stonehouse — provides: ‘The person’s been useless years. Let him relaxation in peace. It is indecent. He is not right here to defend himself. It is appalling manners however that is society now, is not it?’
So which ‘model’ of occasions will type the premise of the ITV drama? Above all, is it potential to get to the reality in regards to the disgraced philanderer and former Cupboard minister, about whom passions nonetheless run excessive almost half a century after he faked his demise?
Stonehouse’s widow, his former secretary and mistress Sheila Buckley, has additionally given the Mail her damning verdict on the approaching ITV drama, likening it to a ‘fairy story’
In keeping with ITV, the drama will absorb his affair with Sheila and his betrayal of his loving spouse in addition to his work for the Czech secret service within the Sixties. (Julian Hayes says he has acted as a guide on the drama however that it isn’t based mostly on his e book as a result of ‘fairly like Chinese language whispers, the narrative and the details have been perverted over time.’)
Succession actor Macfadyen, who performs Stonehouse, has given an perception into the tone of the manufacturing, speaking about how the MP ‘relished the glamour’ of his espionage double life: ‘In his thoughts’s eye he was Edward Fox, Roger Moore — a kind of guys in an overcoat with the collar turned up,’ he says.
‘A case of: ‘Effectively, if I’ll be a spy, I’d as properly get pleasure from it.’ I think about he created his personal James Bond soundtrack in his head.
‘I believe it simply grew to become an excessive amount of. All of it unravelled. I performed it as if he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Though, as his spouse later factors out as soon as he reappears, if he was having a breakdown, he deliberate all of it very properly prematurely.’
Keeley Hawes, in the meantime, describes the script as ‘a heightened model of the reality’ and ‘a tragic story but it surely’s additionally each humorous and transferring’. She provides: ‘We’re coping with an actual particular person and different people who find themselves nonetheless alive.
‘Everyone wished to be very respectful to the reminiscence of John Stonehouse . . . however you make a TV present. A 3-part drama not a documentary.’
In reality, there was a Stonehouse documentary, The Spy Who Died Twice, an hour-long programme broadcast on Channel 4 in Could this 12 months, was based mostly on Augur and Winstone’s Agent Tornado e book. The title is the nickname Stonehouse was given by the Czechs as a result of he was so unreliable.
‘There are parts of the story which might be comical or comi-tragic for positive,’ says Winstone, ‘however in the end he was glad for his household to assume him useless and to get on with one other life with out them. That is extraordinarily darkish.’
She factors out that with a view to acquire faux passports and open financial institution accounts as he deliberate his disappearance, Stonehouse stole the identities of two of his useless constituents, visiting their widows at residence underneath the guise of aiding one-parent households earlier than stealing the lads’s beginning certificates. He had been impressed after studying Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Day Of The Jackal.
It took six months to extradite them to the UK the place he was remanded in custody at Brixton Jail till August 1975
Julia acknowledges her father’s behaviour was ‘horrible’ however says ‘it was solely led to by horrible stress and the consequences of mind-twisting pharmaceuticals’.
She argues the spying allegations have been fabricated by a Czech defector referred to as Frolik and seized upon by ‘Proper-wing parts inside MI5’. Winstone, in the meantime, says: ‘I do not purchase the concept that his actions have been the results of a nervous breakdown and neither did the choose. There was an excessive amount of technique for it to be insanity.
‘He might need had psychological well being points, or probably what we would now name a persona dysfunction, however the one breakdown as such appeared to be after he was caught.’
The entire scheme unravelled inside weeks because of an eagle-eyed financial institution teller in Australia who grew to become suspicious when Stonehouse began transferring massive sums of cash between accounts utilizing totally different, faux names. Initially, it was suspected Stonehouse might be Lord Lucan, who’d disappeared two weeks earlier.
Sheila Buckley grew to become embroiled within the rip-off after he referred to as her from Hawaii, on his approach to Australia, swearing her to secrecy. She flew out to affix him months later after he’d been arrested and was on bail.
It took six months to extradite them to the UK the place he was remanded in custody at Brixton Jail till August 1975. Extremely, he continued to function an MP for an additional 12 months, largely as a result of Labour’s Parliamentary majority was so slim then.
Sheila was alongside him on the Previous Bailey in 1976 when he was jailed for seven years for fraud, theft and deception whereas she was discovered responsible of theft and handed a two-year suspended sentence.
The choose informed her: ‘I believe you have been extraordinarily unlucky that you just met this persuasive, deceitful and bold man.’
However, she stayed by him. After Stonehouse was launched from jail in 1979 on the grounds of fine behaviour and in poor health well being, they married in 1981, arrange residence in Hampshire and had a son. He was solely 62 when he died after a coronary heart assault in 1988.
Regardless of his dramatic fall from political grace, he had largely obtained away together with his spying actions for which he’s believed to have been paid between £70,000 and £80,000 in right this moment’s cash.
Within the final years of his life, Stonehouse was capable of reinvent himself because the writer of political and espionage thrillers, overtly showing on Russell Harty’s chat present to debunk, light-heartedly the ‘terrible story’ that he was a Czech spy.
The spy claims towards him are undoubtedly essentially the most divisive facet of this story. In keeping with Keely Winstone: ‘Historical past is all the time a matter of interpretation however 500 pages of Czech information compiled by 4 separate brokers over a ten-year interval present Stonehouse was within the pay of a Soviet satellite tv for pc state, first as an MP after which as minister. He stays the one serving minister identified to have been within the pay of any enemy energy. And this was within the Chilly Struggle.’
Julian Hayes says: ‘He was a Jekyll and Hyde character. One aspect of him wished to be good, the general public servant and household man however his downfall was his ego, which the Czechs massaged, and his ambition.’
The assertion that her father was a spy nonetheless outrages Julia Stonehouse, notably an allegation — which the three different authors say is unfounded however will characteristic within the ITV drama — that Stonehouse was caught in a honey entice.
She complained to Ofcom about this 12 months’s Channel 4 documentary and despatched letters of criticism about Hayes’ e book to his writer. Now she says her mom ‘would possibly sue’ over ITV’s new drama.
‘Each phrase of it will give my mom a coronary heart assault,’ she says. ‘It is only a nightmare, an utter, utter nightmare.’
Simply how far the TV collection delves into Stonehouse’s spying actions stays to be seen. What’s past doubt is that John Stonehouse was a masterful manipulator, a talented liar and dissembler.
For past the claims that he was a traitor to his nation and his constituents, is the best way he callously betrayed those that beloved him most.
