John Stonehouse's fake death should make for brilliant television, but this insincere retelling was hard to care about
John Stonehouse’s fake death should make for brilliant television, but this insincere retelling was hard to care aboutJohn Stonehouse
. He was the Labour MP who in 1974, mired in debt, suspected of espionage and having an extra-marital affair with his much younger constituency secretary, faked his own death. Leaving his clothes and passport on a beach in Miami to suggest that he had gone for a swim and drowned, Stonehouse boarded a flight to Australia with a bogus identity and what he hoped would be a new life Down Under.
This bizarre episode seems to have stormed back into the national consciousness of late. There was a Channel 4 documentary earlier this year,StonehouseMatthew Macfadyen as the dishonourable member for Walsall North. It should have been irresistible, but somehow, it fell flat. The drama inevitably opened with that staged “drowning” in Miami before reeling back to the late 60s when Stonehouse was the rising star of Harold Wilson’s Labour government.
, but the drama ran with this version of events nevertheless. He was portrayed as a disappointing asset for the Czechs, who swiftly dumped him after Labour lost the 1970 election.was written by John Preston, whose book about Jeremy Thorpe formed the basis for the BBC’s Bafta-winning 2018 drama series.
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