Lord Lambton

 

Lord Lambton was a British aristocrat who resigned from Parliament in 1973 because of a scandal involving his liaison with prostitutes. At the time, he was regarded as a brilliant and ambitious politician in the government of Edward Heath.

 

A life of luxury

 

Antony Claud Frederick Lambton was born into an extremely rich aristocratic family and before 1970, as the Sixth Earl of Durham, was known as Viscount Lambton. As was the custom, he renounced his peerage to enter the House of Commons as a Conservative member of parliament, but insisted on continuing to use his title, thus becoming involved in a legal battle. He grew up in luxury on family estates in Ireland, and was educated at the prestigious Harrow School, an elitist boarding school for boys near London. During World War II, he served as a soldier, but was invalided out and went on to do war work in a factory. In 1921 he married Belinda Blew-Jones, a fellow aristocrat, and the couple went on to have one son and five daughters.

In 1945 Lambton stood for parliament, but it was not until 1951, after serving on Durham City Council, that he gained a seat as a Conservative member of parliament. In 1970 he was made a parliamentary under-secretary of state for defence. In the same year, his father died and he inherited his father’s title, but according to the rules of Parliament, had to give it up if he was to continue as a member of parliament and government minister. However, after disclaiming the title, he insisted on continuing to be addressed as ‘Lord Lambton’ in the House of Commons, which caused a great deal of controversy. Lambton became completely obsessive about the issue, which earned him more than a few enemies in the House, and helped to confirm the stereotypes of snobbery and arrogance that are so often associated with the British upper classes.

 

Smoking cannabis with naked girls

 

Perhaps partly because of his arrogant stance, there were those in the media who wished to bring him down, and in 1973 they got their chance. Under the name Lucas, Lambton visited a prostitute, Norma Levy, a beautiful dark-haired young woman whose looks were similar to that of Christine Keeler, who had been involved in the Profumo scandal. Lambton’s real identity became known to the prostitute when, in typically careless style, he handed her a personal cheque. Together with her husband, Norma Levy decided to capitalise on the discovery and take incriminating photographs of what took place on his next visit. They concealed a tape recorder inside a teddy bear, and Mr Levy hid behind a two-way mirror so that he could take photographs of their famous client. When Lambton came to the house on his next visit, he was photographed smoking cannabis with Norma and another prostitute, the three of them naked in bed together.

 

The scandal is revealed

 

When Lambton left, unaware of what had happened, Mr Levy tried to sell the photographs to the tabloids. Instead, they were handed in to the police. Then one of the more sensationalist tabloids, The News of the World, printed the story and Lambton’s secret was out. As soon as this happened, Lambton decided to resign, writing to the prime minister and to his own constituency. He issued a statement to the press saying: ‘My own feelings may be imagined but I have no excuses whatsoever to make. I behaved with credulous stupidity and consequently let down those I most wished to please – the prime minister, the Conservative Party, my electorate, who have given me 22 years of loyalty and my family.’ He emphasised that he had never discussed any aspect of his job with the prostitutes, which given that he had been engaged for most of the time in recreational activities with the two of them, was not hard to believe. Further humiliation followed when he appeared in court on drugs charges. He pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis and amphetamine tablets and was fined £300.

After the revelation, an enquiry was held to see whether there had been any breach of security as a result of the liaisons, since Lambton was a junior minister in the defence department. However, Lambton assured the court that he had not taken his red state boxes of government papers when he attended his rendezvous with the prostitutes. Since it was clear to everyone that this would have been a rather unlikely thing to do in the circumstances, the enquiry was satisfied that no breach of security had occurred.

Nevertheless, Lampton had to go, especially as after the incident he made matters worse by telling police that he used prostitutes because he felt a ‘sense of futility’ in his job as a junior minister. He also claimed that a battle to continue using an aristocratic title had made him obsessive, and that gardening and sex with prostitutes, among other ‘frantic activities’ had helped him to allay his obsession. Later, in his retirement, he made the simple, perhaps more truthful, statement in an interview with television host Robin Day, that he had visited prostitutes because ‘people sometimes like variety. It’s as simple as that’.

After his downfall, Lambton retired from the political scene to a large villa called Cetinale in Tucany, Italy, where he lived until his death, surrounded by wealthy British expatriates. He and his wife separated and he lived with his mistress, Claire Ward. He seldom returned to Britain, except to attend parties in London, or to go shooting on his estate. Instead, he devoted himself to gardening, reading and entertaining, which he did in style, becoming known as the ‘King of Chiantishire’. He was famous for his sharp tongue, writing acerbic book reviews for a right-wing British newspaper, and gossiping about his many guests. During the 1980s he wrote short stories, novels and a two-volume study of the Mountbatten family, which drew widespread criticism for its unflattering portrait of Earl Mountbatten. In his later years he continued to write, entertain and garden at Cetinale, until his death in December 2006.