Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Sex & Scandal in UK Politics

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

With the UK election a mere few days away (at time of release), what better time to look back at some of the biggest scandals in our political history?In this episode, Kate's exploring the notorious Profumo affair of the early 1960s and the Thorpe Affair of the 1970s.They had it all: sex, espionage and corruption at the highest level of society. It's no wonder they caught the attention of the world's media.Joining Kate today is Richard Davenport-Hines, author of An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo to find out more about them.This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Voting is open for the Listener's Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards, so if you enjoy what we're doing, we'd love it if you took a quick follow this link and click on Betwixt the Sheets: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/votingEnjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code BETWIXTYou can take part in our listener survey here.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here once more, you are here. We're all together again, and I do enjoy our time together so very much. But before we can keep going, I have to let you know

that this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects and you should be an adult too. And if you're not an adult, if you've snuck through somehow, this is your warning to clear off right now. We don't need you around here.

But before you go, if you can legally vote for things, I would really appreciate it if you could vote for us for the Listeners Choice Awards at this year's podcast awards. That would be great before you disappear. I'd really like that. And you can do that by going to the website wwww-Britishpodcastawards.com forward slash voting and clicking on betwixt the sheets.

And maybe we could win it this year. We were placed top 10 last year, you know, and that's all thanks to you. Let's do it again. I think that we can take it this year. On with the show. Today's story is one of sex and scandal that changed Britain forever. Set in the early 1960s, it came at a time of huge social change.

Cultural movements from the likes of the Beatles shook young people out of the shadow of a post-war gloom, and satirists and journalists were braver and bolder at challenging politicians than ever before. So when the news broke that Christine Keeler, a 19-year-old showgirl had an affair with John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, the once-impenetrable divide between the establishment and the rest of us plebs started to crumble.

To add further fuel to the fire and stoking paranoias about the Cold War, Christine was also sleeping with an alleged KGB agent. Whoopsie. With all the sex and espionage and corruption you could wish for from a scandal, it's no wonder that the world's media had an absolute field day. But what became of the main characters in that story, including Stephen Ward, the socialite who introduced Keeler to proficient, Fumo, as well as the KGB agent.

And with the reputation of the conservative government dragged into the gutter, were they really going to let anyone get away with exposing such slees? What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, for beautiful time, goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry.

Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. As scandals go, the perfumour affair has got to be up there with one of the most notorious in British history. It brought issues of sex, class corruption to the front page of every newspaper in the Western world, exposing slees at the very heart of the establishment. Can you even imagine such a thing today? Well, what better time to look at it than in the build-up to the UK election? Who knows? You might even be listening. into this after the election on July 4th, in which case, what's it like in the future?

Are we all out there crowdfunding for an inhaler? Are we full of optimism and hope? Oh, God, please let that be the case. But as we march towards performing our civic duties at the ballot box this week, I want to take a look back at the political scandals that shook the nation. The perfumoe affair of the early 1960s and the Thorpe Affair of the 1970s. Curious to know how these stories unfolded and the carnage that they caused. Well, joining me today is Richard Davenport Hines, author of an English Affair, Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo, who is going to help me find out. Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's Richard Davenport Hines. How are you doing?

Brilliant, thank you. It's very nice having attention paid to me and not doing this. Well, I am here to lavish attention upon you because you are the author of an English affair, sex, class and power. in the age of Profumo. My first question is what made you want to write that book? What was it about the Profumo affair? And we'll get to that in a minute. But what was it that made you want to write that book? Well, I was 10 years old when the perfumo affair broke.

And in 1963, and like huge numbers of young men and some young women of my generation and a bit older. It was absolutely, it was our great sex education class. Things were put in the newspaper that no one dreamt of saying at home. I got sent to be beaten by my headmaster because in an English class I used the word orgy, which I had picked up from the news of the world. We all went absolutely wild. So let's, because there'll be people listening to this who aren't familiar with this history,

who don't know who Profumo was. Can you outline for us what happened in this scandal? John Perfumo was a witch, handsome and pity able, conservative MP who was a minister for war in Hall of Millen's Conservative government who was married to a famous film star, a really remarkable woman, but was a serial skirt chaser. And he met a young woman called Christine Keener at a party and they had a short affair.

It didn't last long. He ended it quite quickly. This affair, a subsequent became public knowledge. The later party played it up as a security breach. And the newspapers paid Christine Kepler and other people to tell stories about what happened and about the cover-up. Most of the stories that were generated were fictions written by the journalists, concocted by the journalist.

The whole thing was pretty much a stunt, but it did terrible damage to the Conservative government and the few of them themselves had to design as a minister. Why did they think it was a security breach? Because that's one of the interesting things here, is politicians have been having affairs with young women since time in memoriam. So what was it about this one that really caused the scandal? Well, the security angle, which was invented, and I can't emphasize how bogus it was,

is that Christine Keeler was paid by a newspaper to say that at the same time that she'd been having the brief affair with John Perfumo, she was also sleeping with an attach at the Russian embassy called Ivanov. And the ridiculous idea was that Fummo on the post-coital whispered secrets up nuclear weapons to Christine Keeler who then passed them on.

That's crap pillow talk, that is. Exactly. I think that if this happened today, it would all play out incredibly differently. And I think Christine Keeler is probably due for a bit of a reassessment of what happened. Tell me a bit about, because she was very much blamed for this, wasn't she? She was the Scarlet Woman. She was this hussy. She was little more than a trollope tempting this politician and also sleeping. with spies, but tell me a bit about who she actually was. Let's try and push through some of the

media nonsense. Well, she was one of life's victims. She grew up in a very small accommodation with her mother with stains in middle sex. Her mother acquired a boyfriend and sort of uncle who got very interested in her once she reached puberty. And the mother must have known she dreaded going to bed and slept with a knife under her pillow at one stage. Her mother must have known everything was going on and this started a pattern of her entering really abusive relationships. She had a very early pregnancy which ended in the death of the baby with a mansion of the Deep South,

to the American Air Force Base in England. She was also incredibly young. I think that in all of the forer about it, people forgot how young she was because wasn't she only 15 when she moved to London by herself to live on her own? Yes, she was extremely young, and she was almost certainly fleeing from her uncle's stepfather and also from some of the guys that she knew locally. And there was Will Vara about her and about many of the other girls who were, in some cases anyway, castaways. There was Will Vero about how she made a life for herself in London.

But it was an extraordinary in the middle 1950s. Parliament passed a new sexual offences act, which covered all versions of sex. There was not a single debate of the Act, Parliament, in the House of Commons. There's no debate of it at all. It was all done in committee because politicians in those days were so stuck up and pompous and sexually repressed. They couldn't bear to discuss sexual matters publicly. And one of the provisions of this act was that if a man went to reprimless, party or to a pub and he introduced a girl who was under 21 to another man and the other man

of the girl later had sex. The guy who had done the introduction was guilty of procuring as if he was a pimp. It was a criminal off to introduce a girl under 21 to a man that she later got off with. I didn't know that. And that piece of legislation was in vote, it was the first bit of the first prosecution of the scapegoat of the Profumo affair, who was the man who had introduced Christine Keeler to Jet Profumo. He was an osteopath called Stephen Ward. He was initially prosecuted under that with Dick Kossack, which was in force until early in Tony Blair's finalistic. It was in force until about 20 years ago that it wasn't used. You've mentioned Stephen Ward there, and we should

introduce him because he's very much a lynchpin in all of this. But how did Christine meet him. So I'm trying to like picture the scene. She's 15 years old, so super young and she hasn't got any qualifications. She arrives in London. How does she meet Stephen Ward? Because as you said, he's a socialite, he's an osteopath. He's running in quite high circles. How do their paths cross? Well, she became a dancer in Soho clubs. In those days, one of the things about dancing was that if you were nude or semi-nude, the police and the census allowed women to appear on stage virtually naked or naked so long as they didn't move. Right.

The women would have to appear as if there were statues. And the idea was that if any breasts moved at all or any hips were seen to move, and the men go absolutely wild, completely preposterous. I worked in the city of London in the 1970s and in the office of the very big company I worked for, all secretaries who were then all women. When they came to work, they had to put on opals. And one of them once welled back up the sleeves of locals during a heat wave. And her boss came to her, a woman of 55, and said, well, well them down, you're distracting all the men.

They'll get him friends. There was this extraordinary attitude by frightened men in authority who weren't up to the job about any sign of women's flesh. So she was the dance at the time. And Stephen Ward, well, he was a man complicated in one way, quite a common type in another. He really liked moving socially with the smart set, people with titles, people with money. He also liked the underside of life. He liked Soho. And the particular thing he liked, he had a flat in Bayswater where he let Christine Keelho, among others, stay for a time.

What he didn't want to get off of the door, but he had adored living in a flat where there were bras chuffed over the back of chairs. he liked having women's clothes and the sensible, tired, beautiful woman dropping her stocking somewhere. That was what he got off on. It's kind of a strange setup. I've often tried to understand what was going there. Why this...

Because how old was Stephen Ward when they met and how old was Christine Keeler? He was about 50 and she was about 30 years younger. Yeah. And so she ends up crashing at his place, staying at his place and she lived with him for a while and so did other girls.

and when it all came out in the scandal, they were sort of, that it wasn't a sexual thing. It's just such a strange relationship for a 50-year-old man to decide that he wants, maybe, actually I'm just saying it out loud, maybe it's not that strange, of like what was going on in this setup. There are all sorts of fluidities. A lot of his friends thought that he was utterly repressed gay man. I have heard that said. That was one notion.

I think it's a bit too facile. I think, you know, some people have foot fetishes. I think he just liked having other people's stockings and bars and stuff around. And the other thing is he couldn't bear being alone. He was one of those people who doesn't find solitude at all refreshing. So he liked to have people in his flat. He liked to meet as many people apart as he could go to. So when the scandal kicked off, the press and the people making the accusations

looked at Stephen Ward and the accusation was basically that he collected young women around him to pimp out to his high-powered friends, some of whom were Russian agents. And there was a definite suggestion that he was a double agent for Russia. Is there any truth in that at all? No, I think that's, it's very tempting to think that. It's a very exciting notion, but it's not really true. He was a busy body, and he did occasionally pass on bits of gossip, political gossip, to MI5, the security service.

but the idea that anyone would trust him in counter espionage is ludicrous because he was terribly gossipy and flamboyant and he was one of those, so many people who are really lonely inside turn into terrible gossips. They want to be the centre of social world. He was one of those, so you couldn't really tell him anything confidentially that wouldn't be known to half a dozen people within a few days. So no, I don't think that was so.

most of the connection with Ivanov the Soviet attach is in Fleet Street invented. And security services were very clear in there reports to the government that there was no security risk at all. Nuclear secrets were repeatedly mentioned. In the first place, the humorous responsories were on manpower in the army. He had nothing to do with nuclear secrets. He didn't have known me. But second of all, the idea that any of his girlfriends had passed the stories on, was ludicrous. I mean, the Fummoe made a great mistake, the great rule for Flandering men

of his generation. Once the newspapers got, the story, she was really harassed and exploited and very badly treated by the journalists. It was a repetition of her earlier misfortunes with some of her earlier orphans. And when the police got involved, again, her relationship with investigating police in the perfumel. of there is, well, it's shocking, really, really shocking, horrible. And amongst other things, they forced her. I mean, they gave her an ultimatum, and she made her a statement accusing a man called Lucky Gordon of having beaten her up because the police wanted to get him, they wanted him in prison, and they wanted to put pressure on him for some other reason.

She had had a fight with a young, so-called antique steeler called Hamilton Marshall, They had a sort of screaming, hissie fitting one another a couple of times. Hamilton Marshall actually went to the police and said, no, it was me who gave her a black eye. It wasn't Lucky Gordon. And the police told him to sod off. And as a gay man at a time when homosexuality was still criminal, he then were treated because he felt threatened.

And Christine Keeter was really threatened by the police. And she and her then, Mandy Wines, Davis were arrested on trumped-up charges. It's such a mess. Before we get, obviously the police bring a new aspect to this and it all goes like fuel onto a fire. But how does Christine Keeler even meet Profumo? Is that through Stephen Ward? Where do they meet? Where does this affair even start?

Stephen Ward had a little cottage on the tents, led to him by one of his patients. He'd been treating a man called Lord Astor for a bad back, ingratiated himself with the asses, I was allowed to use this little cottage, which looks like a suhachalé, on the banks of the river tents. Right. And Pfeumo was in a party with Lord Astor.

And after dinner, they went over to his swimming pool. And Christine Keeler was one of the people swimming in the pool, possibly in a one-piece bikini, according to all the newspapers. And there are all sorts of stores about people running around the pool chasing. It's all nonsense. It was perfectly respectable. swimming party that's got turned into a wearing an orgy by fleet stream. So when they talk about them having an affair, that much seems beyond dispute.

Something happened. But to call it an affair suggests that this was a protracted, drawn-out relationship. And I sort of get the sense that that's, I'm not quite sure what you'd call this, but what is the extent of this relationship? Is it a couple of nights spent together? Is this a relationship over a few months? What are we talking about here? Yeah, so relationship over a few months, a couple of months.

It's a pretty short-lived. And it's a week when he can get away from his wife and when he can get away to Parliament. It's a very disemang had to travel in his job internationally. So it lasts two or three months and it's meeting every 10 days or so. It's a very casual affair for sex. So how on earth do the police get involved? Like, they've had an affair.

The affairs ended. It's not exactly a great love story. Who phones the police? Well, what happens first of all is that the guy I mentioned before, Lucky Gordon, who is a very violent and unappealing man, goes around to a flat in which he thinks Christine Keanu and Manuel Davis Davis are inside, and he shoots it up a bit from the outside. And so he's arrested, and after his arrest,

and the fact that Christine Keena was there, Fleet Street works out of Christine Keenna, was known to Profumo, and they then go to her at the beginning of January 63, offer her to her a lot of money to tell her story. And then she and those other girls realized they're on a winner and start selling their stories to the newspapers, and that builds up a momentum. There had been a spy case just before Christmas,

in which there had been a man spying for the Russians in the Admiralty. He was certainly a spy, but the account of why he spied, which is through homosexual, blackmail, nonsense. The newspapers were absolutely wild over really, it was career-bashing, and they, one, the Daily Mail in particular, published stories. When a judge asked them to give their sources for the stories, the journalists went to prison because they wouldn't obey.

They wouldn't obey because the stories were made up. Anyone who reads the stories of the Daily Mail published will seem that they're a plausible concoction, it's impossible this stuff. And so Fleet Street was desperate to avenge the two in prison journalists. I see. I'm blaming the government and really wanted another sex scandal. Their far-lawful is gay, sex scandal, and while they fizzled out, this one fitted the bill, and also it was much nicer.

The brother of photographs were much nicer. I'll be back with Richard after this short break. Is it true that there is a connection between print, Philip and the Pumo affair because I remember seeing that in the crown and thinking, ah ha ha, I wonder if that's true. Is that true? His name just got dragged into it. His name has sort of

dragged into it. Stephen Ward was a really good amateur artist who specialised in pen and in sketches of people. He got around, didn't he? And he went to people and said, can I draw you? And he did very good drawings and they were good. There was an exhibition of some of his drawings that

went on the time of his trial to try and weighs money for his defence and someone came in and bought a lot and took them away and it's generally thought that this was a member of the wall household because one of the pictures was of prince philip. I did think a man of prince philip's position and allure and experience needed steep a war to pin for him I think he sat for him for a sketch and that was that But it was a classic example because one of the newspapers had a huge headline which said no truth in the Prince Philip's story, but then ran the story as if it was true. So they got around liable lawyers and they got around pressure by denying the story, but then giving it a huge prominence nevertheless underneath the headline. So they were really sharp.

Clever. So this is a media atmosphere that's just. primed and ready to go for the kill. And this is the perfect story. Christine Keeler takes the money, sells her story. She can't possibly have envisioned what was going to happen next. Then someone starts making accusations of espionage. And is that when the police are called in? Yes. The government decides, and as the press up war gets to the crescendo, that they must try to shut it down with a police investigation into the espionage allegations. But they very quickly, the Home Secretary of the time, is a very uptight, prudish Puritan.

And he's completely horrified by any sort of sexual irregularity. And the police are clearly given a steer to find a scapegoat who can be prosecuted, find someone to blame so that the case, the whole business can then be finished with and to concentrate on the sex side rather than on the espionage, which is in any way investigated by my side rather than the Metropolitan Police. So that's why the Metropolitan Police go off to the Steekeye Award, because he had introduced Christine Keener when she was younger than 21 to various men, including joggers humos. So he's turned into the scapegoat and the girls he knew were put under tremendous pressure to testify against him.

The Metropolitan case were very unregulated at that time where they did interviews. Well, it's really brutal. They're out for blood, aren't they? And they get it as well, because Stephen Ward, he took his own life during the trial, didn't he? Yes, the trial is heartbreaking to weed. The judge is very hostile to Ward from the start.

The prosecuting council is vilifies, reviles Ward, as a purve and as a disgrace. society and war takes a drug overdose while the jurors are out considering its verdict and he's not there normally the prisoner has to be present when the jury reaches its verdict he's not he's in a hospital bed on the brink of death but the judge nevertheless insists the jury gives its verdict of guilty in war's absence and what is much worse is that another judge the lord chief justice Lord Parker, at the very same time overturn the conviction of Lucky Gordon, whom Christine Keeler had been forced to testify against. He overturns it because Christine Keel's evidence is seen to be

completely untrue. He then sends a message to the other court and the appell, which has went to the jury, saying although her evidence in the other case has been overturned, there's no way reflects on what she has testified in the student war trial. And the really awful thing is that after the student war trials over, the police get her, they then arrest her and charge her with perjury. It's the perjury that she was forced to give by the police, and she goes to prison horribly for several months at the end of 63, 64, which is the way she's put out of circulation.

She can't have any more interviews. She's shut up. And it's that whole episode in which she goes. the prison, which I believe her very admirable son is trying to overturn. That's really unforgettable. That's vile, isn't it? And what about Profumo during all of this time? What's he doing?

What's his wife doing? She plays the part of the loyal, immaculate political wife, and is supportive and fantastic, but he's forced to resign from the government in June. he resigned as a puritan or two. His political career is ruined and he retires uneasily into private life. He had considerable money

because his father or grandfather was one of the founders of major insurance company so he was able to live well and later became a charity worker and restored his reputation later life. And what about Christine? She just seems so unprotected in all of this by virtue of her age, by virtue of her life experience, there's nobody there to support her.

She never, I don't know, bounces back, but she never moves past this scandal, does she, through her entire life? She's like a scarlet woman has to wear the letter her entire life. Yes, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah, that's exactly why she's demoralized and she's broken by it, whereas her friend Mandy West Davis, who I knew quite well, bounced back from this, was a really resilient person who went on. to make considerable money for itself while in clubs, done things.

I'm just thinking about the Jeremy Thorpe scandal that happened sort of on the back of this. And for anyone that's... I don't even know how you sum that one up quite quickly. That's such a weird set of events. Tell us what the Jeremy Thorpe scandal was about. And this is a few years later, isn't it? For a few years in 63, in the late 1970s, Jeremy Thorpe, who was the leader of the Liberal Party, got into increasingly public trouble because he was being pursued

by a younger man whom he had sex with in the early 1960s when such sex was illegal. And thought that he had married and had a child was nevertheless a very flamboyant, unreliable, madly egotistical guy. There's a very good biography by Mark Block. which suggests that for him in fact murdered somebody in the 1950s in a yachting accident in order to inherit money. And he's involved with a lot of dodgy companies.

He loves meeting members of the world family. He's very boastful and bombastic. And I think he's got, he's absolutely rotten judgment, rots into the core. And he gets a number of very dodgy characters he knows to the Liberal Party to, shoot dead, the young guy who's been bothering him. Norman, wasn't it? Norman Scott was still alive and is about humour and therefore very polite. Norman Scott's dog was Winker, was very famously shot dead on Exmoor by a very incompetent,

hired assassin, and the money trail led back to Thorpe. Thought was eventually put on trial for attempted murder, having been forced to resign as lead of the Liberal Party. he was acquitted and then lost the 1979 general election of his constituency. You don't think he tried to have anyone shot. That was all. No, I'm sure he did it all.

Everything was claimed against it by the prosecution was essentially why he certainly initiated a conspiracy to murder Norman Scott. Absolutely no doubt about that. But I'm sure it's true. The people who gave the evidence about why it's true gave false evidence.

Oh, I see. I see, okay. One of the main witnesses was a man called Bessel who had been a liberal MP. He's such a smiley, good-looking. He looks like one of those sort of brilliant, handsome men, and he's always hanging around with Republican presidents. I know the type. There are two biographies of Jeremy Thorpe, and the very good one by Michael Block treats Bessler as an inveterate liar.

And the other biobody often, well, tends to take on trust everything Bessel says, as it makes such a good weed. Yeah. The very powerful men, Jeremy Thorpe and Profumo, and they came a cropper in the end, I suppose, because they told lies and they did bad things. But arguably, they kind of got away with it quite lightly considering the things that they did,

although they didn't do all the things that they're accused of. How do you think our modern-day political scandals compare to this? I'm just thinking because what's going on with Donald Trump in America. One thing I would say is that neither thought no, perfumer were really very powerful men. They had positions in public life that were in the sort of middle level, which is perhaps why they were more weckless and at the top they weren't, people weren't like that.

I think that's fair to say. But it's inconceivable that a convicted felon should be running for the presidency. I'd say that perfumoe affair is very important in the history of journalism in Britain because commercial television had meant that people were buying things. fewer and fewer newspapers by the end of the 1950s start of the 60s. So one of the things about the few days that the newspapers start printing things, sexually enticing, exciting things, which they never have done before as a way of crawling back readers who were spending their money or stuff to do with commercial television advertising.

That's a real fact. What can you say about Trump? I mean, I know really distinguished Americans who are cooked and are. idiots who are still swear by Trump. Yes. It's got nothing to do with what's true or false. It's to do with which side you're on. It's very frightening.

Reading about the Profumo affair and talking to you about it, there just seems to be so many parallels with what's happening today. I suppose my question is, did anyone learn anything from the Profumo or Thorpe Affair? Oh, yes. And a lot of, it's very different now. For one thing, same-sex relations, which were then, a criminal where men were concerned, but really scandalous, considered utterly revolting,

likely to bring down the fall of the British Empire, all that stuff. All that rubbish has gone utterly. It's really thanks to Tony Blair's government. And I think that's an enormous improvement. It's not a matter of all criminal prosecution anymore, the police involvement. So that's hugely better. And the police could make money on the side when they were doing. sex investigations because they leaked stuff for cash to the journalists.

It was an easy job. We didn't actually have to meet criminals. You've just bullied people who weren't criminals from gotten convicted. And that atmosphere has definitely changed so far as sexual matters go, which I think is a great improvement. I think we would view Christine Keeler very differently today as well. I think that we would be more willing to look at her as somebody that shouldn't have been in that situation to begin with.

Yes, well, she would certainly be seen as somebody who had been really damaged by her upbringing and was making her way in a hostile environment when she was very vulnerable. Newspapers called her tart, much worse words, just because she had premarital sex or had sex with people, she didn't know very much. But how much more freestyle sex life, which would be absolutely normal, conventional, admirable today, She got punished for. Richard, you have been fascinating to talk to today, and if people want to know more about you and your work,

where can they find you? Are you on social media? I suppose I'm on Wikipedia. I'm not on social media. The horror and fury of my publishers, but I have so many brothers, sisters, aunts, cousins who would invite me around tea or whatever it was, ask me to go to family funerals,

whatever it was, if they could find me on social, media and I'm trying to hide it from my loving family. Very smart man. Richard, thank you so much for talking to me today. I'm a possessor, really. Thank you so much for listening and thanks to Richard for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts.

If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hi, you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. We have got episodes on everything from Emperors and Scandals in ancient Rome with the one and only Mary Beard and episodes on queer life in post-war London, all coming your way. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith, the senior producer was Charlotte Long.

Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.