By David Craig

Published: Monday, 02 January 2023 at 12:00 am

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One of the most shocking scandals of the 1970s is to be put to screen in ITV1 drama Stonehouse, which sees Succession star Matthew Macfadyen portray the titular politician who faked his own death to start a new life abroad.

John Stonehouse was serving as Labour MP for Walsall North when he staged the scheme, which allegedly followed a stressful stint serving as an informant for the Czech secret service.

Once considered one of the party’s rising stars, Stonehouse is now remembered as one of the more outlandish figures in its history, making the saga a natural fit for A Very English Scandal author John Preston.

Comparing the two cases, he told RadioTimes.com: “Why did both [Jeremy] Thorpe and Stonehouse behave in this completely ridiculous way? I did wonder if perhaps one of the things about being in the Westminster bubble, as it were, is that it does kind of separate you from any sense of absurdity.

“And so, if Stonehouse had had a modicum of a sense of absurdity, or indeed much in the way of common sense, he would have thought, ‘Don’t do this completely mad thing.’ But plainly, he didn’t.”

Preston pens the screenplay for ITV’s three-part drama, which also stars Keeley Hawes as first wife Barbara Stonehouse and Emer Heatley as then-mistress Sheila Buckley, whom he later married.

Here’s your guide to the stranger-than-fiction true story that inspired Stonehouse.

Stonehouse true story

John Stonehouse became an MP in 1957, winning the since-abolished seat of Wednesbury for Labour, and soon began climbing the ranks of the party.

It wasn’t long before he was promoted to junior minister of aviation, but this rapidly growing prominence allegedly attracted the interest of Czechoslovakian secret service.

In the authorised history of MI5, titled The Defence of the Realm, historian Christopher Andrew writes that Stonehouse was one of several MPs that had been spying for eastern European nations while in office.

However, John’s daughter Julia has previously expressed her disapproval of this theory, calling it a “misrepresentation” of what was really going on and revealing her father was suffering from mental illness.

“He was crazy. Bonkers,” she said (via The Guardian). “We knew that. He had bad mental health, coupled with the effects of Mandrax, [a sedative] also known as Quaaludes, that he was taking in 1966 while he was a government minister, flying about everywhere.”

Julia – who wrote her own book in 2021 titled John Stonehouse, My Father: The True Story of the Runaway MP – is certain these deep psychological issues were most influential in driving Stonehouse to fake his own death, as opposed to his relationship with mistress Sheila Buckley or any alleged spying activity.

Screenwriter John Preston agrees with Andrew, however, with the show depicting Stonehouse as rather inept at espionage, failing to provide the kind of information that would make him a sound investment.

“He was really a very bad spy,” he told press. “The Czechs had recruited quite a lot of MPs and trade union leaders at the time, none of whom I think delivered anything of any usefulness at all.

“But I think, even by those standards, Stonehouse was unusually bad. And I think he’d sort of had this peculiar idea that any information that he imparted was, by definition, extremely important – and it wasn’t.”

ITV

As is standard for historical drama, some scenes are works of the writer’s imagination, with one such example being in the first episode, when Stonehouse bids farewell to his family before setting off to Florida to stage his apparent demise.

“Certainly, he must have said goodbye to his family, even though they thought he was going to be coming back however many days later – and he knew he wouldn’t be coming back,” explained Preston.

“So that is plainly a poignant moment and I was clear from the beginning that I wanted it to be both poignant and funny. Those are things that actually aren’t natural bedfellows, but it seemed to me that you could actually use the humour to deepen the poignancy rather than to diminish it.”

As depicted in the series, Stonehouse visited Miami Beach during a work trip and went for a swim in the ocean, leaving his clothes neatly folded on the beach.

ITV

When he never returned, the immediate assumption was that he had drowned, but in fact, he had sneaked away and flown to Australia using a fake passport in the name of a dead constituent.

While he was able to enter the country under his new persona, it wasn’t long until he was detected by authorities and deported back to England, where he was convicted on charges of fraud, theft and deception.

Preston added: “In a funny kind of way, the deeper he went into the story, the more ludicrous his behaviour almost had to become to adjust to the kind of changing circumstances.

“I don’t think he was a naturally eccentric sort of man who wore a monocle or a purple flower in his buttonhole or anything like that. But I think that he sort of desperately tried to adjust to these changing circumstances, and in doing so behaved in an increasingly absurd way.”

ITV

He was sentenced to seven years in prison, serving three of them before being given early release due to health concerns, following three heart attacks suffered while incarcerated.

Remarkably, the love between himself and mistress Buckley endured the botched death fake-out and his prison time, as the two went on to marry after Stonehouse’s divorce from his first wife, Barbara Smith.

There are, again, conflicting opinions on whether Buckley had any knowledge of the ill-fated Australia scheme, with Julia Stonehouse maintaining that her eventual stepmother did not.

Earlier this year, she stated that newspaper reports from the time, which claimed that Stonehouse had sent a trunk to Australia in advance of his arrival containing some of Buckley’s clothing, were inaccurate.

“We know where it went and who opened it, and it is not true that her clothes were inside. But it set a story going that has lasted decades,” she added.

John Stonehouse died in April 1988, aged 62, following his fifth heart attack.

Stonehouse is coming to ITV1 on Monday 2nd January 2023. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on.

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