The story of British politician John Stonehouse, who disappeared while swimming off the coast of Miami in the early 1970s, ranks among the top spy thrillers.
The only trace of the Labour MP for Walsall North was a neatly folded pile of clothes in a beachside cabana adjacent to his luxury hotel.
It was speculated that the married father of three had suffered a heart attack and drowned, been devoured by a shark, or possibly been abducted by the Mafia.
As the rumor mill continued, hazy information about his business and personal interests emerged. Stonehouse, a high-flying minister in Harold Wilson’s government, faked his own death on November 20, 1974, coming ashore further along the Florida coast and changing into clothes he had left at another hotel before fleeing to Australia under a false identity. He was discovered alive and well five weeks later.
The mystery of the late MP’s disappearance will be retold in a three-part ITV drama starring Matthew Macfadyen as Stonehouse and his real-life wife Keeley Hawes as his onscreen spouse.
His ill-fated attempt to establish a new life with his lover while leaving his wife and children to believe he was dead was, without a doubt, one of the most bizarre chapters in British political history, and it has come back to haunt them nearly half a century later.
For, beginning next week, a new three-part ITV drama starring Matthew Macfadyen as Stonehouse and his real-life wife Keeley Hawes as his onscreen spouse will recount the astonishing tale of the late MP’s Reggie Perrin-style abduction. In recent years, three distinct novels have been written about Stonehouse, including one by his own daughter. As a result, recollections of this jaw-dropping saga — as the expression goes — vary.
As is now generally regarded by historians, was Stonehouse a Czech Secret Service spy?
Or did he simply leave in the midst of a nervous breakdown following a series of questionable financial transactions and an affair with his secretary?
According to people with personal knowledge of the controversy who talked with The Mail, not everyone is pleased with the version of events that will air on Monday, notably one of his daughters. Julia Stonehouse, 71, the author of John Stonehouse, My Father: The True Story of the Runaway MP, is unhappy with ITV.
It was speculated that the husband and father of three had suffered a heart attack and drowned, been devoured by a shark, or perhaps been abducted by the Mafia.
Despite early talks with scriptwriter John Preston, author of the book A Very English Scandal about disgraced Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe that was transformed into a critically praised 2018 television drama starring Hugh Grant, she has not worked on the ITV production about her father.
She sees the forthcoming Stonehouse play as predatory, stating that it has made her 91-year-old mother – the former wife of the MP, Barbara — ‘furious’.
She continues, ‘It is emotionally devastating to us. It causes emotional harm to the family. Money has always been involved. I am absolutely enraged. Also my mother. My entire family is as well.
I hope Keeley Hawes and her husband are content with their relationship.
Julia claims that her ‘beautiful’ father was a spy and is sure that his attempts to start a new life abroad with his much younger secretary, Sheila Buckley, were the result of a mental breakdown precipitated by his addiction to prescription medicines for anxiety and insomnia.
Julia writes in her book, “No one realized that he was silently bursting within his skull.” However, Stonehouse’s great-nephew Julian Hayes relates a quite different story, throwing a wrench into the literary works.
Stonehouse: Cabinet Minister, Fraudster, Spy portrays Stonehouse as a ‘callous’ and avaricious guy who faked his own death following a series of catastrophic and fraudulent business failures.
Michael Hayes, the father of Hayes, was an impressionable trainee solicitor at the time of the scandal. After assisting his uncle with his business activities, he was unknowingly brought into the scandal by his uncle and eventually testified against him in court.
Hayes, 57, a criminal barrister, describes in the ‘definitive biography’ how he found secret reports in Prague archives that, according to him, indicate beyond all reasonable doubt that at the height of the Cold War, Stonehouse was a spy in the employ of the Czech security services.
Hayes says, “I understand why Julia wants to maintain his memory.” She desires to safeguard what she can. However, it blinds her to things that are not particularly acceptable from her perspective.
According to people with personal knowledge of the controversy who talked with The Mail, not everyone is pleased with the version of events that will air on Monday.
A third book, Agent Twister: John Stonehouse And The Scandal That Gripped The Nation, paints Stonehouse as a’serial traitor’ and a Soviet Bloc’spy’, providing additional food for the Stonehouse mill. The authors, Philip Augar and Keely Winstone, refer to it as the “sole objective, exhaustively researched account of the entire Stonehouse saga.”
Keely Winstone tells me that Stonehouse was an extraordinarily charismatic and dangerous individual. He demonstrated no remorse. It will be strange if ITV has turned this into a humorous story, as he was not a very kind man.
Sheila Buckley, Stonehouse’s ex-secretary and mistress, has also criticized the forthcoming ITV drama, calling it a “fairy tale” in an interview with the Mail. Sheila, who was 21 years younger than Stonehouse, ultimately married him and bore his fourth kid.
“Most of it consists of lies, especially the new material. From her separate home in a quiet cul-de-sac in Southampton, she claims, “There’s hardly any accuracy in it.” Sheila, who was 22 when she first met Stonehouse and is now 76, states, ‘The man has been dead for years. Rest in peace, sir. It is obscene. He is not present to make a defense. It’s awful etiquette, but that’s modern society, isn’t it?
So whose “version” of events will the ITV drama be based on? Is it feasible to discover the truth about the disgraced philanderer and former Cabinet minister, about whom passions remain strong nearly half a century after he faked his own demise?
Sheila Buckley, Stonehouse’s ex-secretary and mistress, described the forthcoming ITV drama as a “fairy tale” in the Mail.
According to ITV, the drama would include his infatuation with Sheila, his betrayal of his devoted wife, and his involvement with the Czech secret agency throughout the 1960s. (Julian Hayes states that he participated as a consultant for the drama, but that it is not based on his book) “Like Chinese whispers, the story and the facts have been warped through the years,” he explains.
Succession actor Macfadyen, who portrays Stonehouse, has provided insight into the tone of the show by discussing how the politician ‘enjoyed the splendor’ of his second life as a spy: He explains, “In his imagination, he was Edward Fox, Roger Moore, or one of those men wearing an overcoat with the collar turned up.”
Well, if I’m going to be a spy, I might as well have fun with it. I believe he composed his own James Bond score in his imagination.
I believe it simply grew excessive. It all unravelled. I performed it like if he were close to a nervous collapse. Nonetheless, as his wife notes when he reappears, if he was experiencing a breakdown, he had meticulously prepared for it.’
Keeley Hawes, on the other hand, views the script as “an exaggerated version of the truth” and “a tragic tale that is both amusing and moving.” She continues, ‘We are dealing with a real person and other living individuals.
Everyone wanted to be very sensitive to John Stonehouse’s memory, but you are filming a television show. This is a three-part drama and not a documentary.
In reality, there was a Stonehouse documentary, The Spy Who Died Twice, which was based on Augar and Winstone’s Agent Twister novel and shown on Channel 4 in May of this year. Because Stonehouse was so unreliable, the Czechs gave him the nick-name “Unreliable”
Winstone says that there are comical or comi-tragic components to the story, but that the protagonist was eventually content for his family to believe he was dead and to move on with his life without them. That is incredibly dim.’
In order to obtain phony passports and open bank accounts as he planned his escape, Stonehouse stole the identities of two of his deceased constituents, visiting their widows under the premise of supporting single-parent families and then obtaining the men’s birth certificates. He was motivated after reading The Day Of The Jackal by Frederick Forsyth.
It took six months to extradite them to the United Kingdom, where he was held until August 1975 at Brixton Prison.
Julia recognizes that her father’s behavior was ‘awful,’ but explains that it was caused by extreme stress and mind-altering medications.
She contends that the allegations of espionage were invented by a Czech defector named Frolik and used by “right-wing elements inside MI5” Winstone, meanwhile, states, “Neither I nor the judge believe that his acts were the product of a nervous breakdown.” There was too much order for it to be considered insanity.
He may have had mental health concerns or what we would today call a personality disorder, but the only apparent collapse occurred after he was apprehended.
The entire operation unraveled in a matter of weeks due to an astute bank teller in Australia who became suspicious when Stonehouse began transferring significant quantities of money between accounts using fictitious names. Stonehouse was initially believed to be Lord Lucan, who had vanished two weeks prior.
Sheila Buckley became involved in the scheme when he swore her to secrecy over the phone from Hawaii while en route to Australia. She flew out to join him after he had been arrested and released on bond for several months.
It took six months to extradite them to the United Kingdom, where he was held until August 1975 at Brixton Prison. Unbelievably, he continued to serve as a member of parliament for another year, primarily because Labour’s majority in Parliament was so small at the time.
Sheila was present at the Old Bailey in 1976 when he was convicted of fraud, theft, and deception and sentenced to seven years in prison, while she was found guilty of theft and given a two-year suspended sentence.
The judge told her, “I believe it was your misfortune to meet this convincing, dishonest, and ambitious man.”
Despite this, she remained by his side. After Stonehouse’s 1979 release from prison for good behavior and ailing health, the couple married in 1981, settled in Hampshire, and had a son. In 1988, he passed away from a heart attack at age 62.
He is estimated to have been compensated between £70,000 and £80,000 in today’s currency for his espionage efforts, despite his precipitous fall from governmental favor.
In his final years, Stonehouse was able to reinvent himself as an author of political and espionage thrillers, openly coming on Russell Harty’s talk program to disprove the ‘horrible rumor’ that he had been a Czech agent.
Undoubtedly, the spy allegations against him are the most contentious component of this narrative. According to Keely Winstone, “history is always up to interpretation, but 500 pages of Czech data produced by four independent agents over a ten-year period demonstrate that Stonehouse was in the employ of a Soviet satellite state, first as an MP and subsequently as a minister.” He is the only active minister known to have been paid by an adversary power. This occurred during the Cold War.’
Julian Hayes asserts, “He had a Jekyll and Hyde personality.” One aspect of him wanted to be nice, the public servant and family man, but his ego, which the Czechs stroked, and his ambition were his undoing.
The suggestion that her father was a spy continues to anger Julia Stonehouse, particularly the unsubstantiated allegation that she was captured in a honey trap, which will be featured in the ITV drama.
She filed a complaint with Ofcom regarding this year’s Channel 4 documentary and submitted letters of complaint to Hayes’ publisher on his book. She now claims that her mother “may sue” over the forthcoming ITV show.
She says, “Every word of it will give my mother a heart attack.” It’s nothing but a nightmare, an absolute, absolute horror.
How deeply the television series explores Stonehouse’s spying activities remains to be known. John Stonehouse was without a doubt a brilliant manipulator, a skillful liar, and a deceiver.
In addition to allegations that he was a traitor to his country and constituency, he also cruelly deceived those who loved him the most.