09 Friday Oct 2020
Posted in Art and Photography, Books, Brighton, Music, Poetry, Profumo Affair
≈ Comments Off on Violets, Flamingos and Heroes in Autumn
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Brighton, Christine Keeler, David Bowie, Dreadzone, Emily Capell, Flamingo, Flamingo Club, Geoff McCormack, Lana Del Rey, Mercy for Christine, NHS Heroes, Rosie the Riveter, Roxana Halls, Seymour Platt, The Skatalites, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass
On New Year’s Eve, I wrote here of my fears over where the world is heading. Little did I know that only a few weeks later we would be facing up to a pandemic. 2020 has been a strange, lonesome year for many of us. Continue reading
12 Friday Jun 2020
Posted in Art and Photography, Marilyn Monroe, Profumo Affair
≈ Comments Off on Sal Jones Gives Christine (and Marilyn) the Last Laugh
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A Smile is a Smile, Background Bob, Christine Keeler, Cliveden, Nahum Baron, Noah Jones, Profumo Affair, Sal Jones, The Last Laugh, Thursday Club
London-based artist Sal Jones, whose paintings were featured in the recent exhibition, Dear Christine: A Tribute to Christine Keeler, has painted another portrait, ‘The Last Laugh,’ based on a candid photo taken by the pool at Cliveden during that fateful summer of 1961. Continue reading
13 Wednesday May 2020
Posted in Art and Photography, Profumo Affair
≈ Comments Off on Dear Christine: A Tribute in Art, Poetry and Prose
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Alan Olley, Amanda Coe, Arthouse1, Barbara Howey, Bo Gorzelak Pedersen, Caroline Coon, Catherine Edmunds, Cathy Lomax, Charlotte Innes, Charlotte Metcalf, Christine Keeler, Claudia Clare, David Astbury, Dear Christine, Elysium Gallery, Fine Cell Work, Fionn Wilson, Guinevere Clark, Helen Billinghurst, J.V. Martin, James Birch, Jeni Williams, Jo Mazelis, JoWonder, Julia Maddison, Julie Burchill, Kalliopi Minioudaki, Kathryn Gray, Lewis Morley, London, Lucy Cox, Mandy Rice-Davies, Marguerite Horner, Mari Ellis Dunning, Murray's Cabaret Club, Natalie d'Arbeloff, Newcastle, Pal Hansen, Patrick Jones, Pauline Boty, Poetry, Profumo Affair, Rebecca Fairman, Roxana Halls, Sadie Hennessy, Sadie Lee, Sal Jones, Sarah Caulfield, Sarah Shaw, Seymour Platt, Shani Rhys James, Soho, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Stella Vine, Swansea, Tanya Gold, The Keeler Affair, Vane Gallery, Wales, Wendy Nelson
Dear Christine: A Tribute to Christine Keeler first took root in 2014, when Fionn Wilson painted a set of four portraits in black and white, based on 1960s photographs by Lewis Morley and others. Like myself, Fionn first discovered Keeler in retrospect. She asked other women artists, some of whom had lived through the Profumo Affair to contribute works about Christine. For many of us, her story represents a rite of passage. As Fionn notes in her foreword to the exhibition catalogue, the scandal “let the genie of sex out of the bottle” and “dealt a death blow” to class deference. At the same time, it unleashed a brave new world of tabloid exposure. “Never had the press been so bold and it has never looked back.” Continue reading
05 Thursday Mar 2020
Posted in Art and Photography, Profumo Affair
≈ Comments Off on ‘Dear Christine’ Symposium Rescheduled
The Dear Christine symposium has been rescheduled for Saturday, March 28, at Deptford Town Hall, London from 12-6 pm – more details here. (Shown above is ‘Casting the First Stone’ by Marguerite Horner, oil on linen, 2017.)
UPDATE: Due to ongoing concerns about COVID-19, this symposium has been postponed until further notice.
23 Sunday Feb 2020
Posted in History, Politics, Profumo Affair, Television
≈ Comments Off on ‘Keeler, Profumo, Ward and Me’
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Andrew Lloyd-Webber, BBC, Caroline Kennedy, Christine Keeler, Cliveden, Ernest Marples, Eugene Ivanov, Geoffrey Robertson, George Wigg, Harold Macmillan, John Profumo, Keeler Profumo Ward and Me, Lord Astor, Lord Denning, Lord Hailsham, Mandy Rice-Davies, Natalie Livingstone, Profumo Affair, Stephen Pound, Stephen Ward, Thomas Critchley, Tom Mangold
“The story that defined a decade of great change in Great Britain was my big break in Fleet Street, and I covered and loved every moment of it, from the ridiculous to the tragic …”
Tom Mangold, described in The Times as ‘the doyen of broadcast reporters’, began his career as an investigative journalist on Fleet Street before moving into television as a foreign correspondent, and has since made over 100 documentaries, including many for the BBC’s Panorama. But like many others drawn into the Profumo Affair, Mangold has never quite moved on from the 1963 scandal which still leaves more questions than answers.
Keeler, Profumo, Ward & Me is the third documentary on the subject in which Mangold has played a prominent role within the last decade: BBC Radio Four’s Profumo Confidential, which he presented, and ITV’s Sex, Lies and a Very British Scapegoat both aired in 2013, fifty years after the event. And as BBC1’s six-part drama, The Trial of Christine Keeler, sets the rumour mill in motion again, its final episode was followed immediately by Mangold’s latest account on BBC2. Continue reading
