An excellent recap, Matt, speaking as someone who was in his teens at the time. One detail to expand on your point that 4,000 copies of the Denning Report were sold on day one, is that there was a long queue outside HM Stationery Office, then in Kingsway, waiting for it open uniquely at midnight. On the counter, stacks of the blue pamphlets were piled high. I still have mine! Incidentally, Denning’s clipped, factual style was in stark contrast to the drama he was describing.
Thanks Matt….I always reflect that without Profumo’s trousers around his ankles I (born in 1963) I would never have progressed from being brought up in a bathroom-less tenement in inner London to being a consultant (anaesthetist) in the NHS. Wilson’s 1964 government introduced means-tested grants and local-authority paid fees for university students, a path which is now denied working-class kids. Also, Keeler and Rice-Davies were never seen as “victims” (which they undoubtedly were)….
It’s always amused me that when Profumo failed to support the government in the Norway Debate in May 1940, an incensed Captain David Margesson, the Government Chief Whip, told Profumo: “I can tell you this, you utterly contemptible little shit. On every morning that you wake up for the rest of your life you will be ashamed of what you did last night.”
An excellent recap, Matt, speaking as someone who was in his teens at the time. One detail to expand on your point that 4,000 copies of the Denning Report were sold on day one, is that there was a long queue outside HM Stationery Office, then in Kingsway, waiting for it open uniquely at midnight. On the counter, stacks of the blue pamphlets were piled high. I still have mine! Incidentally, Denning’s clipped, factual style was in stark contrast to the drama he was describing.
Thanks Matt….I always reflect that without Profumo’s trousers around his ankles I (born in 1963) I would never have progressed from being brought up in a bathroom-less tenement in inner London to being a consultant (anaesthetist) in the NHS. Wilson’s 1964 government introduced means-tested grants and local-authority paid fees for university students, a path which is now denied working-class kids. Also, Keeler and Rice-Davies were never seen as “victims” (which they undoubtedly were)….
https://www.cityam.com/on-this-day-profumo-proves-the-cover-up-is-always-worse-than-the-crime/
It’s always amused me that when Profumo failed to support the government in the Norway Debate in May 1940, an incensed Captain David Margesson, the Government Chief Whip, told Profumo: “I can tell you this, you utterly contemptible little shit. On every morning that you wake up for the rest of your life you will be ashamed of what you did last night.”
He had *no* idea.
Slightly off topic Nice lido, where?
What is about osteopaths?