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Among the diplomats that attended Stephen Ward's parties was a Russian naval attaché Eugene (Yevgeny) Ivanov. Yevgeny used Stephen’s desire to draw Khrushchev to strengthen their friendship and they spent a lot of time together, leavened by Stephen’s apparent willingness to pass on any information about British foreign policy that he may happen upon.

According to secret papers, now public, in 1961 this became a specific request from Yevgeny to obtain information about disposition of western nuclear weapons in Germany. Stephen duly arranged for Christine to meet John Profumo, Minister for War, at an infamous pool party, and a brief affair began.

It is claimed by all concerned that this failed to elicit the information requested by Ivanov.

Until her death Christine maintained that she refused to ask what was requested of her and until his death in 2006, Profumo maintained that no such information was either elicited or provided. Both were proven liars but the secret papers generally supported the view that this was not the sort of information that would make good pillow talk and that while Profumo may have been foolish, he was no traitor. You can read Yevgeny's Wikipedia entry here...

MI5 already knew Yevgeny was actually a GRU (Soviet Secret Service) spy but it seems that they failed to warn Profumo. A year after the infamous Profumo/Keeler affair was over, at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, Ward is said to have acted as a middle-man, putting the Russians in touch with the British establishment on Khrushchev’s behalf to see if there was a way of breaking the standoff with the Americans.

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Travel

Morocco

In August 2008 we visited Morocco; before going to Spain and Portugal. We flew into Marrakesh from Malta and then used the train via Casablanca to Fez; before train-travelling further north to Tangiers.

Fiction, Recollections & News

On The Secret

There is an obvious sub-text to my short story: The Secret, that I wrote in 2015 after a trip to Russia. Silly things, we might come to believe in, like 'the law of attraction' are not harmless.

The story is also a reflection on the difference between American and Australian stereotypes, that were evident from conversations on the cruise.

I lived in New York for some time and my eldest daughter was born there. I have visited the US fairly regularly since. It is, in many ways, the closest country to Australia that you will find, outside New Zealand. So, I have often been surprised by how different it is in other ways to Australia, given the great similarities in the median standard of living, shared popular culture and immigrant demographics.

I have come to the conclusion that this stems from our different founding origins.

Opinions and Philosophy

The reputation of nuclear power

One night of at the end of March in 1979 we went to a party in Queens. Brenda, my first wife, is an artist and was painting and studying in New York. Our friends included many of the younger artists working in New York at the time. That day it had just been announced that there was a possible meltdown at a nuclear reactor at a place called a Three Mile Island , near Harrisburg Pennsylvania.

I was amazed that some people at the party were excitedly imagining that the scenario in the just released film ‘The China Syndrome’ was about to be realised; and thousands of people would be killed.