Little can John Stonehouse have imagined as he left his neat bundle of clothes in a locker near a Miami beach and embarked on a remarkable disappearing act in 1974 that nearly half a century later he would become the subject of a three-part television series, two documentaries and a trio of combative books that have pitted members of his family against each other.
The three-part series, Stonehouse, stars Matthew Macfadyen, fresh from his triumph in Succession, in the eponymous role and his wife, Keeley Hawes, playing Barbara, the politician’s then wife. It is written by John Preston, author of A Very English Scandal, the book about disgraced Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe on which the 2018 television drama was based. The off-screen drama is the question of whether Stonehouse was a spy and fraudster or a well-intentioned anti-colonial campaigner who lost his reason through too many prescription drugs.
