1963

The fall of a prime minister. The rise of a journalist.

This is the story of a political cover up.  The story of how and why the press and politicians colluded to bury the Profumo scandal, and how an intrepid team of young journalists reported the truth – bringing down the Conservative Prime Minister in the process and putting themselves and their families at risk at the height of Cold War paranoia.

1963 captures a time when social and sexual mores were in ferment ; it plays out in tawdry London bars and photographers’ studios, in the newspaper offices of Fleet Street and Grays Inn Road, in the corridors of British power at Westminster and Downing Street and the hushed HQ of MI5.  Behind the events of this infamous scandal lie a timeless and untold story of the struggle between the establishment and the enquiring voices searching for the truth.

At the heart of our story are two very different men:

Clive Irving (30), cocky, charismatic, working class; head of the newly created Insight team at the Sunday Times, a career defining job given to him by editor-in-chief Denis Hamilton

As much as he enjoys riling and infuriating staid senior colleagues, Clive is the first journalist of the new era – an investigative reporter whose loyalty is to the story first and foremost, and who will put his colleagues and his family on the line to get the facts.

- and

Harold Macmillan (69), Prime Minister of Britain, head of the Conservative Party. A man from another era; born into the wealthy Macmillan publishing family, a distinguished military career in WW1, the PM who told Britain “you’ve never had it so good” in the post war boom. Out of sync with the 1960s, finding sex scandals repugnant in the light of his own wife’s adultery, he is to discover to his cost that “members of my club” do lie.

This struggle to retain control of the scandal is the defining story of the clash between the Establishment and the New Order; the essence of the 1960s itself.

And there are no winners in this story.

For Macmillan, the loss of his premiership closes a whole era of patrician rule,. For Clive, it’s a journey from journalistic fervour to reluctant critic of press ethics   as he sees the investigation he began turned into a witch-hunt and scapegoating of Stephen Ward – leading to Ward’s suicide.