Editing Christine Keeler (section)

== Biography ==
=== Early years ===
Keeler was born in [[Uxbridge]], Middlesex. Her father, Colin Sean Keeler (later known as Colin King, 1921–1976),{{Sfn|Knightley|Kennedy|1987|pp=53–54}} abandoned the family in 1945. She was brought up by her mother, Julie Ellen ({{nee|Payne}}, 1923–2012),{{Sfn|Weight|2021}}<ref name="timeline">{{cite web |title=Timeline |url=https://www.christine-keeler.co.uk/timeline.html |website=Christine Keeler |publisher=Seymour Platt |access-date=4 December 2021}}</ref> and stepfather, Edward Huish, in a house made from two converted railway carriages in the [[Berkshire]] village of [[Wraysbury]]. In 1951, at the age of 9, Keeler was sent to a holiday home in [[Littlehampton]] because the school health inspector said that she was suffering from malnutrition.{{Sfn|Kynaston|2009|p=28}} She was sexually abused as a teenager both by her stepfather and his friends, for whom she babysat.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29213271|title=Obituary: Christine Keeler|date=5 December 2017|work=BBC News|access-date=6 December 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180612043214/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29213271|archive-date=12 June 2018|url-status=live}}</ref>

At the age of 15, she found work as a model at a dress shop in London's [[Soho]]. At age 17, she gave birth to a son after an affair with a [[United States Air Force]] sergeant; the child was born prematurely on 17 April 1959 and survived just six days.{{Sfn|Weight|2021}}

That summer, Keeler left Wraysbury, staying briefly in [[Slough]] with a friend before going to London. She initially worked as a waitress at a restaurant on [[Baker Street]], where she met Maureen O'Connor, who worked at [[Murray's Cabaret Club]] in Soho. O'Connor introduced Keeler to the owner, Percy Murray, who hired her almost immediately as a topless showgirl.{{Sfn|Knightley|Kennedy|1987|pp=55–57}}

At Murray's, she met [[Stephen Ward]], an [[osteopath]] and artist. His practice and art brought considerable social success, and he made many influential friends. The two soon lived together with the outward appearance of being a couple, but, according to her, it was a platonic, non-sexual relationship. In her autobiography, {{Citeref|Keeler|Thompson|2012|style=plain|''Secrets and Lies''}}, Keeler maintained that Ward was working as a [[double agent]], having contact with both senior members of [[MI5]] and the [[KGB]], and was passing UK state secrets to the latter.{{citation needed|date=April 2024}}

=== Profumo affair ===
{{Main|Profumo affair}}
On the weekend of 8–9 July 1961, Ward introduced Keeler to [[John Profumo]], the [[Secretary of State for War]], at a pool party at [[Cliveden]], the [[Buckinghamshire]] mansion owned by the [[William Astor, 3rd Viscount Astor|3rd Viscount Astor]]. Profumo began a brief affair with Keeler, the exact length of which is disputed. It either ended in August 1961, after the security services warned Profumo of the possible dangers of mixing with the Ward circle, or it continued with decreasing fervour until December 1961.{{Sfn|Irving|Hall|Wallington|1963|pp=49–53}} Among Ward's other friends, whom Profumo briefly met, was the Soviet naval attaché and [[GRU (Soviet Union)|GRU]] officer, [[Yevgeny Ivanov (spy)|Yevgeny Ivanov]]. According to Keeler, she and Ivanov had a short sexual relationship.{{Sfn|Knightley|Kennedy|1987|pp=66–70, 86–87}}

After her relationship with Profumo ended, Keeler was sexually involved with several partners, including Jamaican jazz singer [[Lucky Gordon]] and Antiguan jazz promoter [[Johnny Edgecombe]]. There was considerable jealousy between the two men; in one quarrel on 27 October 1962, Edgecombe slashed Gordon's face with a knife.{{Sfn|Davenport-Hines|2013|pp=252–53, 258}} When Keeler ended the relationship with Edgecombe in December 1962, Edgecombe turned up at Ward's house in [[Wimpole Mews]] on 14 December, where she was temporarily seeking refuge, and fired five shots at the building.{{Sfn|Irving|Hall|Wallington|1963|p=75}} His arrest and subsequent trial brought Keeler to public attention and provided the impetus for a national scandal to develop.{{Sfn|Young|1963|pp=9–11}} After initially denying any impropriety with Keeler, Profumo eventually confessed and resigned from the government and Parliament, causing great embarrassment to his government colleagues, who had previously supported him. These events, in the summer of 1963, brought Keeler notoriety; ''[[The Economist]]'' gave the headline "The Prime Minister's Crisis" alongside a picture of Keeler, with no further explanation.{{Sfn|Young|1963|pp=18, 24-25, 36}}

=== Morley portrait ===
<!-- Linked from redirect [[Morley portrait]] -->
[[File:CKeeler1.jpg|thumb|[[Lewis Morley]]'s photographic portrait of Keeler astride an imitation [[Model 3107 chair|Arne Jacobsen chair]], 1963]]

At the height of the Profumo affair in 1963, Keeler sat for a photographic portrait by [[Lewis Morley]]. The photoshoot, at a studio on the first floor of [[Peter Cook]]'s [[Establishment Club]], with Morley was to promote a proposed film, ''[[The Keeler Affair]]'', that was never released in the United Kingdom. Keeler was reluctant to pose in the nude, but the film producers insisted. Morley persuaded Keeler to sit astride a plywood chair so that, while technically nude, the back of the chair would obscure most of her body. Keeler told cartoon historian Tim Benson in 2007 that she was not nude and was wearing knickers during the entire photoshoot.<ref name="chair">{{cite web|title= Christine Keeler Photograph: A Modern Icon|url= http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/c/christine-keeler-photograph-a-modern-icon/|publisher= Victoria and Albert Museum|access-date= 2 February 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140110105413/http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/c/christine-keeler-photograph-a-modern-icon|archive-date=10 January 2014|url-status=live|date= 15 June 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/keeler-affair-1963| title=The Keeler Affair (1963)| publisher=[[British Board of Film Classification]] | access-date=19 June 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171206161416/https://bbfc.co.uk/releases/keeler-affair-1963 |archive-date=6 December 2017 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

The photo propelled [[Arne Jacobsen]]'s [[Model 3107 chair]] to prominence, even though the chair used was an imitation of the Model 3107, with a hand-hold aperture crudely cut out of the back to avoid copyright infringement. The particular chair used is in the [[Victoria and Albert Museum]].<ref name="chair" /> The differences in the designs of the chairs are readily apparent in a side-by-side photograph.<ref name="chair" />

=== Trials ===
[[File:Christine Keeler op weg naar het gerechtsgebouw, Bestanddeelnr 915-5221.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Keeler going to court in September 1963]]

On 18 April 1963, Keeler was attacked at a friend's home. She accused Gordon, who was arrested and charged. At his trial, which began on 5 June, he maintained that his innocence would be established by two witnesses who, the police told the court, could not be found. On 7 June, principally on the evidence of Keeler, Gordon was found guilty and sentenced to three years imprisonment.{{Sfn|Irving|Hall|Wallington|1963|p=148}} By this time, Ward was facing trial on vice charges, and Keeler was again a main prosecution witness.{{Sfn|Irving|Hall|Wallington|1963|pp=193–94}}

Ward's trial, which ran 22–31 July 1963, has been characterised as "an act of political revenge" for the embarrassment caused to the government. He was accused of living off immoral earnings earned through Keeler and [[Mandy Rice-Davies]] based on the small contributions to household expenses or loan repayments the two had made to Ward while living with him. Ward's professional earnings as an osteopath were a substantial £5,500 a year (£{{Inflation|UK|5500|1962|r=-2|fmt=c}} in {{Inflation-year|UK}}) at the time these small payments were made.{{Sfn|Robertson|2013|pp=80–81}} After a hostile summing-up from the trial judge, Ward was convicted, but took an overdose of barbiturates and died before the jury returned its verdict and sentence could be passed.{{Sfn|Knightley|Kennedy|1987|pp=243–47}} In the closing days of Ward's trial, Gordon's assault conviction was overturned by the [[Court of Appeal (England and Wales)|Court of Appeal]] when his missing witnesses were found and testified that the evidence given by Keeler was substantially false.{{Sfn|Robertson|2013|pp=92–95, 101}} In December 1963, Keeler pleaded guilty to charges of [[perjury]] before [[Sir Anthony Hawke]], the [[Recorder of London]], and was sentenced to nine months imprisonment, serving six months in prison.{{Sfn|Knightley|Kennedy|1987|p=252}} Her cellmate while in prison was Elizabeth Crowley, the wife of East End bank robber William Crowley, the maternal grandparents of [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] MP [[Wes Streeting]].{{cn|date=April 2025}}

=== Later life ===
[[File:Christine Keeler on After Dark.JPG|thumb|alt=A photograph of a woman with shoulder-length brown hair facing the viewer and looking slightly to the right while wearing a white shirt with a floral print|Keeler discussing the Profumo affair on ''[[After Dark (TV programme)|After Dark]]'' in 1988]]

After her release from prison in 1964, Keeler had two brief marriages, to James Edward Levermore (22 October 1965; dissolved 1966) and Anthony Sydney Platt (18 February 1971; separated 1972; divorced 27 May 1977).{{Sfn|Weight|2021}}<ref name="timeline" /> There was a child from each union, the elder being primarily raised by Keeler's mother, Julie.

Keeler mainly lived alone in the last couple of decades of her life. Most of the considerable amount of money that she made from newspaper stories was dissipated by lawyers. She said that during the 1970s, "I was not living, I was surviving".{{Sfn|Knightley|Kennedy|1987|p=256}} She published several accounts of her life, in one of which she claimed that she became pregnant as a result of her relationship with Profumo and subsequently had an abortion.{{Sfn|Keeler|Thompson|2012|pp=123, 134}} Her portrait by Ward was acquired by the [[National Portrait Gallery, London]], in 1984.{{Sfn|Summers|Dorril|1989|p=311}}

In 1988, Keeler was featured in [[Bryan Ferry]]'s promotional video for the single "[[Kiss and Tell (Bryan Ferry song)|Kiss and Tell]]" (originally released on Ferry's seventh solo album, ''[[Bête Noire (album)|Bête Noire]]'', in 1987) with Mandy Rice-Davies; this was meant to draw more attention to the song's theme.<ref>{{SongFacts detail|8268|Kiss And Tell|11 July 2019}}</ref> In June 1988 she made an [[After Dark (TV programme)#Harvey Proctor and "Open To Exposure?"|extended appearance]] on [[Channel 4]] discussion programme ''[[After Dark (TV programme)|After Dark]]''.<ref>{{Cite episode |title=Open to Exposure |series=After Dark |network=Channel 4 |date=4 June 1988 |series-no=2}}</ref>

===Death===
On 5 December 2017, Keeler's son, Seymour Platt, announced that she had died, aged 75, the previous night at the [[Princess Royal University Hospital]] in [[Farnborough, London]].<ref name="Davies">{{cite news|last= Davies|first= Caroline|title= Christine Keeler, former model at heart of Profumo affair, dies at 75|url= https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/05/christine-keeler-former-model-at-heart-of-profumo-affair-dies|access-date= 5 December 2017|work= The Guardian|date= 5 December 2017|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20171216174639/https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/05/christine-keeler-former-model-at-heart-of-profumo-affair-dies|archive-date= 16 December 2017|url-status= live}}</ref> She had been ill for some months, suffering from [[chronic obstructive pulmonary disease]] (COPD).<ref name="Davies" /> Her funeral took place on 16 December at the West London Crematorium in [[Kensal Green Cemetery]].<ref>{{cite news|last= Mount|first= Harry|author-link=Harry Mount |title= Freed from her demons, Sixties icon Christine Keeler is laid to rest|url= https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/16/freed-demons-sixties-icon-christine-keeler-laid-rest|access-date= 11 July 2019|work= The Telegraph|date= 16 December 2017|url-access= subscription|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20190711000728/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/16/freed-demons-sixties-icon-christine-keeler-laid-rest/|archive-date= 11 July 2019|url-status= live}}</ref>