If you don't know the story of John Stonehouse — the British politician who faked his own death, deserting his wife and children to start a new life in Australia with his mistress, away from his fraudulent financial woes — chances are you will soon.
Intense interest has been building about the British Labour MP, once touted as a potential future prime minister, whose outrageous behaviour led to his arrest in Melbourne on Christmas Eve in 1974 and an Old Bailey trial yet, bizarrely, he continued on as an MP.
Stonehouse's eventual resignation, from a British prison in 1976, caused prime minister James Callaghan's Labour government to lose its knife-edge majority, forcing them into a coalition with the Liberal Party.
In just over a year, three books and a British Channel 4 documentary about Stonehouse have been released.
A new three-part drama, Stonehouse — streaming in Australia on Brit Box from January 17 — stars real-life couple Matthew Macfadyen (Succession, Pride and Prejudice) and Keeley Hawes (The Durrells, Spooks) who play on-screen husband and wife John and Barbara Stonehouse.
Despite the flurry of attention, however, uncovering the truth about the disgraced MP has proven difficult.
At the centre of the mini-series is a dramatic family dispute between Julia, Stonehouse's daughter and a professional ghost writer, and Julian, his great-nephew and a criminal lawyer.
Their books, John Stonehouse, My Father: The True Story of the Runaway MP by Julia Stonehouse, and Stonehouse: Cabinet Minister, Fraudster, Spy, by Julian Hayes, were released at the same time. Julia contends that two of three nouns used in the subtitle of Hayes' book are lies: he wasn't a cabinet minister and she denies he was a spy.
Their accounts differ on the details, leading to official complaints to publishers and broadcasters, accusations of having agendas and attempts at discrediting one another.
What's the truth?
Here's what seems to be objectively and unanimously irrefutable in all accounts of John Stonehouse.
He was ambitious, and wanted to be prime minister. As Postmaster General, he oversaw the introduction of first and second class stamps.
He was a philanderer; with a wife and children at home, he began an affair with his secretary, Sheila Buckley, 21 years his junior. The affair led to her own arrest: presumed to be an accomplice in Stonehouse's conspiracy to deceive, Sheila was given a suspended sentence when a judge decided she'd been controlled by her boss. Still, she married him following his release from prison and gave birth to their son shortly after.
Stonehouse was also a fraudster. He embarked upon a series of failed and fraudulent business dealings, deceiving those closest to him, including his own nephew, Julian Hayes' father, who unwittingly helped in his capacity as a solicitor.
A judge found him guilty of 21 counts of theft, fraud, forgery and deception, one of which included impersonating two of his dead constituents by stealing their identities and obtaining a passport in one of their names — which he used to travel to Australia.
He faked his own death in 1974 by leaving a set of his clothes folded on a Miami beach, appearing to have done a Harold Holt or killed himself. Obituaries were published despite there being no corpse.
In an extraordinary turn of events, Stonehouse's wife and mistress both flew to Australia separately following his arrest. He tried to convince them to allow him to continue seeing them both. Barbara Stonehouse later filed for divorce.
Stonehouse met with persons at the Czech embassy; he twinned his constituency of Wednesbury with the Czech town of Kladno and tried to sell them VC-10 commercial planes in his capacity as an MP. They nicknamed him Agent Twister.
The up-and-coming barrister Geoffrey Robertson represented Stonehouse at the Old Bailey until Robertson was sacked by his client, who decided to represent himself against all advice.
On top of his other charges, Stonehouse was also sentenced for wasting police time. During his 68-day trial he made the longest dock statement in British history, lasting an unprecedented six days. The ancient right was later abolished as a result.
When he died of a heart attack on set in a TV studio in 1988, Stonehouse had been declared bankrupt, served three years of a seven-year prison sentence and defected twice — first to the English National Party which celebrated, amongst other things, Morris dancing, then to the SDP, which later became the Liberal Democrats.
'I don't think anybody really knew him'
The main point of contention between Julia Stonehouse and Julian Hayes is whether Stonehouse was a secret agent for the Czechs — something several accounts suggest is true, including Agent Twister, the book by Philip Augar and Keely Winstone published in September 2022.
Even official MI5 historian Christopher Andrew described Stonehouse in 2009 as "the only British politician (so far as is known) to have acted as a foreign agent while holding ministerial office".
Stonehouse's daughter, Julia, refutes this so rigorously she has set up a website dedicated to her father's defence, citing extensive evidence to the contrary.
Julian Hayes, who acted as a script consultant on the ITV drama, concedes Stonehouse was "a complicated character".
"I don't think anybody really knew him," he tells ABC News. "He led a number of different lives. And the only person who really knew him was himself."
Yet even that seems up for debate. In an eyebrow-raising speech following his arrest and extradition to England from Australia, when Labour reluctantly allowed his continuation as an MP due to their wafer-thin majority, Stonehouse told the House of Commons:
"I assumed a new parallel personality that took over from me, which was foreign to me and which despised the humbug and shame of the past years of my public life."
Whilst the ITV drama begins with the caveat that it is "based on a true story with some scenes and characters imagined for dramatic purposes", the true story itself almost beggars belief.
"It's a tremendous story," Hayes says. "If you were to write a fiction novel about it, people would say, 'Come off it!'"
Meanwhile, Stonehouse's daughter Julia was frozen out of the drama's scriptwriting process. "Apparently ITV do not feel it'd be polite for the family to be given early access, as the press have been given," she tells ABC News. "I hear it contains a plethora of untruths."
She has previously told British media: "My mother is 91 now and will have to watch all this crap again. It is horrific."
Julia says she believes the ITV drama has done what other writers and broadcasters continue to do: "cash in" on the "the dramatic and lucrative 'spy' narrative" — which she says sells by shamefully misrepresenting the source documents.
"Meanwhile we, the family, will have to live with the repercussions of this false narrative, just as we have had to for almost half a century," she says. "The Stonehouse family are not averse to people writing their own accounts of the John Stonehouse story — but we do insist they stick to the truth."
Where's the evidence my father was a spy?
Julia Stonehouse claims the "spy narrative"' rumours were also spread by right-wing elements of MI5, and that the accounts of Czech intelligence officers (who claim he spied for them) are notoriously unreliable and cannot be trusted because they were "known liars and exaggerators".
"My website is called 'So where's the evidence?' precisely because nobody has been able to produce evidence [my father was a spy]," she says. "This is why the other two books have had to invent evidence by misrepresenting the StB [the secret police force in communist Czechoslovakia] sources, which is plain disgraceful."
Julia has written 13 objection letters to the publishers of the Hayes book (Hachette Australia) and one to Simon and Schuster, the publishers of Agent Twister, plus complaints to ITV about the upcoming drama and to Ofcom about the Channel 4 documentary.
"I believe this to be a political issue ... branding a Labour politician a communist 'spy' could cause negativity and suspicion to fall over Labour Party politicians in general," she wrote.
She claims Stonehouse's behaviour can partly be attributed to his addiction to, overdose on and withdrawal from now-banned prescription drug Mandrax, which caused a breakdown.
'One long apology for a man who never apologised'
Julian Hayes, however, claims Julia Stonehouse has another agenda.
"Her book is one long apology," he says. "Yet Stonehouse himself never apologised. Julia is trying to defend the indefensible. I can understand why — it's her father, that's her right. But it's also her agenda."
The drama of John Stonehouse's story is becoming somewhat superseded by the "she said, he said" contest between his relatives.
Whilst Hayes insists he examined source documentation "in considerable detail, with a lawyer's lens", and cross-referenced it with British Hansard reports and national archives in Prague, Julia Stonehouse points out that his book "doesn't contain a single reference".
Hayes says his references are cited in the body of the book, rather than in the traditional way at the back.
"Nobody writes non-fiction without references, aside from Julian," Julia says. "References provide evidence. Julian has avoided using references for the simple reason that he misrepresents what the documents actually say. He doesn't want anyone to check what he says."
Hayes' book details Stonehouse's budding relationship with the Czechs. "They initially saw he was green and used his ego, yet also knew he was a potential Labour Party leader and saw him as a long term investment in their own cause," he says. "He was groomed by them in a gradual process over drinks and meals. Eventually, he accepted money from them — and was compromised."
If indeed Stonehouse was a spy, Hayes argues he wasn't a very good one.
"He didn't provide them with particularly good information, and the Czechs were disappointed about that," he says. "I'm not sure he gave away any great state secrets."
He can't sue, he's dead
One thing Stonehouse's living relatives agree on is that his story has become distorted and sensationalised over the years.
"It was Chinese whispers — there were lots of gaps," Hayes says.
The new ITV drama has filled some of those gaps with dramatic licence for entertainment value, including a "honey trap" scene in episode one, which imagines the Czechs filming Stonehouse having sex with one of their agents, then blackmailing him with the tape.
Both Hayes and Julia Stonehouse agree this didn't happen. It's another element that will no doubt add further layers to the legend of Britain's strangest would-be PM.
For whatever his word is worth, Stonehouse himself denied espionage.
"People can say he was a spy because he can't sue, he's dead. And in law the dead can't be defamed by libel or slander because they no longer have a reputation to damage," Julia Stonehouse says.
"That leaves the way open for anyone to say anything they like about him — even when they have no evidence."
Stonehouse streams on BritBox on 17 January.
