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Stonehouse: Cabinet Minister, Fraudster, Spy

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To great fanfare and media attention Stonehouse appears at the Old Bailey to answer several charges whereupon he decided to act as his own attorney making the claim that his fake identities had taken him over causing him to undertake the strange actions he was being accused of.

a vivid account' Telegraph 'Completely absorbing' CAROL ANN LEE, author of The Murders at White House Farm and A Passion For Poison 'I literally consumed the book in just a few hungry sittings . It transpired that they had met up in Copenhagen during the period when he was supposedly dead, a reckless act by him and an encounter with bad consequences for her. She’s also studied the Stonehouse file from the StB archive and says she finds in it nothing to prove that he either took cash from them or provided any information that wasn’t readily available in the public domain. Last week’s arrest of a security guard employed at the British embassy in Berlin, on suspicion of spying for Russia, serves as a stark reminder that the UK and its allies are in the thick of a new Cold War. This is that Stonehouse was an avaricious chancer who faked his death in a last-throw attempt to escape a series of failed and fraudulent business dealings in which he had entangled innocent friends and relatives, including the author's father.The historical narrative is fascinating although so much of what happened at that time resonates through to today, with the Cold War intrigue and the rise and fall of a significant political figure. She argues that her late father was the victim of vicious and inaccurate newspapers, disloyal colleagues, rightwingers seeking to discredit the Wilson government and rogue elements in the British secret services.

By now, it had been revealed that Stonehouse, a serial philanderer, was in a long-term affair with his secretary, Sheila Buckley, who was 21 years younger. On 20 November 1974, while booked in at the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami, he told a business colleague that he was going for a late afternoon swim. View image in fullscreen John Stonehouse with his first wife, Barbara, and children Julia and Matthew at their country home in 1969.Then he was found - on the other side of the world, in Australia - and his extraordinary story began to come to light: a Labour cabinet minister and a devoted family man; also in a long-term affair with his secretary, and a spy for the Czech State Security agency, who had committed fraud and attempted to fake his own death to escape catastrophic business failures. Julian has over 30 years’ experience, having a considerable and respected reputation in the fields of crime and family work. As part of the elaborate pre-planning of his disappearance, Stonehouse had siphoned money into bank accounts in the names of his false identities. This book is a brief account of the life of John Stonehouse, with particular emphasis on his botched attempt to fake his own suicide (and the subsequent trial). The story certainly had some sensational elements to it, especially the fact that Stonehouse had accepted money from an East Block country during the Cold War.

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