The subject of Andrew Lloyd-Webber's "Stephen Ward the Musical," Ward
was thesocial cavalier who knew everyone who mattered, and who played
anenigmatic role inone of thegreat political scandals of the 20th
Century
The tragic story of the persecution, trial, and death of Stephen Ward is
both torturous and infamous. Now, author Douglas Thompson has traced
confidants of Ward, speaking for the first time in more than half a
century; along with newly-discovered government documents, he has
gathered their eyewitness accounts of Downing Street intrigue, sex
orgies, and dangerous liaisons. Few truly knew the rakish charmer who
was the catalytic character of The Profumo Affair. A talented osteopath
and artist, Stephen Ward treated, sketched, and seduced the great and
often not-so-good of the post-war years. He healed Churchill and Gandhi,
Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor; he drew Princess Margaret, the Duke
of Edinburgh, Harold Macmillan, dukes, duchesses, maharajahs, and
Christine Keeler, whose striking likeness by him hangs in the National
Portrait Gallery in London. Everyone loved the superbly well-connected
Stephen Ward. But when Christine Keeler slept with two of his friends
British War Minister John Profumo and Soviet superspy Eugene Ivanov and
President Kennedy's White House went haywire, suspicion and scandal cast
a shroud over Ward and his world. In the middle of a nuclear poker game,
he soon had MI5 and MI6 snapping at his heels, along with the KGB, the
CIA, and the FBI at his shoulder. The spooks all feared what he might
know, or do. The British Establishment, keen to see Ward gone, brushed
him off.Posterity is ferociously capricious, but there are still those
alive who know the secrets and the true story of Stephen Ward
brilliantly told here."
