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4 months ago
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Letters from Christine Keeler to her worried parents while she was in prison in the wake of the Profumo affair have been discovered along with unseen images.
The nightclub hostess tried to reassure her mother Julie Ellen not to worry about her while she was in Holloway Prison, which she likened to school.
In her first letter, she described the conditions inside.
She said: 'This place isn't half as bad as I expected, the people here are very nice everyone is nice to me.
'Don't worry I'm fine in fact it's just like school, and there is a girl here I went to school with.'
The fascinating archive relating to the sixties' showgirl also includes previously-unseen childhood photos of her.
There is also her own copy of the famous picture of her sat naked astride a modernist chair by photographer Lewis Morley.
The iconic image was taken at the height of the scandal involving John Profumo, the then Secretary of State for War, and six months before she was sent to prison.
Keeler had been sleeping with both him and handsome Russian spy Evgeny Ivanov - prompting fears of a national security breach as the Cold War raged.
She was jailed for perjury in December 1963 after Profumo had resigned over the extra-marital affair he tried to cover up.
Letters from Christine Keeler to her worried parents while she was in prison in the wake of the Profumo affair have been discovered along with unseen images. Above: Keeler with a friend in one of the newly-discovered images
The nightclub hostess tried to reassure mum Julie Ellen not to worry about her while she was in Holloway Prison, which she likened to school
She gave false evidence during the trial of her former partner Lucky Gordon, who she claimed had attacked her.
The archive, which is worth more than £10,000 and is coming up for auction, belongs to James Birch, who was a friend of Keeler's for many years.
He was a well-known art dealer who curated the exhibition 'Christine Keeler: My Life in Pictures' at The Mayor Gallery, London, in 2010.
The nine handwritten letters from prison date from December 8, 1963 - just after she was sent down - to April 19, 1964, days before she was released.
In them Keeler, who was 21 at the time, regularly wrote of looking forward to her parents' visits to see her in jail, noting in one letter 'your all I'v got in the world [sic]'.
In a letter written on December 29, 1963, she wrote of having had a nice Christmas with 'plenty to eat and a few party games.'
She added: 'I do hope you're both well as I worry about you both dreadfully, you have even more time to worry about things...do look after yourselves.... your all I'v [Sic] got in the world.'
Keeler was at the heart of Britain's most infamous sex scandal after she and war minister John Profumo (pictured in 1962) had an extra-marital affair when she was 19-years-old
An unseen image of Keeler from the archive, which is being sold by her friend, art dealer James Birch
Keeler with two male friends in another of the images that have not been seen in public before
Another image from the unseen collection of photos showing Keeler with friends and family
Keeler as a young girl. The image is one of several that are being sold with her letters
Keeler with her family. The image is one of several being sold with her letters
Keeler as a young girl, standing next to a dog. She grew up in the Berkshire village of Wraysbury
Keeler as a school girl. She was sexually abused as a teenager by her stepfather
Keeler sits on a car with a man and a woman who may be her mother and stepfather
Another image from the archive showing Keeler as a young girl
Keeler also referenced her notoriety following the Profumo scandal and how prison helped her escape it.
She wrote: 'I quite like it here, its nice to get away from the life I was having outside.'
She wrote in another letter: 'Things have gone very fast in the past year but I'm still your daughter and I'll be coming home again soon every weekend when people have forgotten all about me, there is nothing to fight but everything to forget.
'Funny isn't it I'v always keep your from certain things in my life as I'v thought you to precious and me to bad, but I suppose you have always known about everything.'
In another she wrote: '...don't worry mum, I'm not going to do anything wrong so don't even think of it, remember I have learnt to let the water just run off my back.'
In other letters she wrote of her plans for pursuing a film career after getting out.
She said: 'I am only young and I should start on a career of some sort seeing as my name is well known I might as well carry on with that and make lots of money ha! ha!'
Letters from Keeler to her parents. Along with the photos they are expected to sell for more than £10,000
A post card sent by Keeler when she was in New York trying to launch a modelling career
A letter written on paper headed with the address of HMP Holloway
Keeler's passport, which expired in 1984, is also seen in the archive
The inside of Keeler's passport. The document is part of a trove of Keeler's possessions that are going to auction
The archive include a menu from Murray's Cabaret Club in Regent Street. Christine Keeler worked at this club in the 1960s
'My Lyons has got me a very good agent that I will sign up with but only for six months just in case I don't need him. He is very well known in the film business.'
Elsewhere in the archive there is a drinks menu for Murray's Cabaret Club, which is where Keeler worked as a topless showgirl.
There she was introduced to the society osteopath Stephen Ward. It was Ward who later introduced Keeler to Profumo.
There is also a postcard from the Peppermint Lounge in New York that she sent to her parents in 1962.
At the time, Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies - who was called to give evidence in a court case involving Ward - were there in a bid to launch their modelling careers.
Rice-Davies, who like Keeler was a show girl, claimed in court that one of her lovers had been Viscount 'Bill' Astor, whose estate in Berkshire was there Profumo met Keeler.
Her retort of, 'well, he would say that wouldn't he?', when she was told Astor denied her claim has entered the English language.
The archive is being sold by Sworders Auctioneers of Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, on July 30.
Who was Christine Keeler and what was the Profumo affair?
Born in Middlesex, Christine Keeler moved to London as a teenager and began working at Murray's Cabaret Club in Soho.
It was there she met Dr Stephen Ward, a high-flying London osteopath and fixer who 'procured women' for leading members of the Establishment.
He introduced her to Conservative War Minister John Profumo while at a party thrown by Lord and Lady Astor in 1961.
The pair hit the headlines after seven shots were fired at Ward's house in a quiet Marylebone mews by a jilted boyfriend of Keeler's a year later in December 1962.
Born in Middlesex, Christine Keeler moved to London as a teenager and began working at Murray's Cabaret Club in Soho. Right: John Profumo (pictured with his glamorous actress wife Valerie Hobson) had to resign after details of his affair with Christine Keeler emerged
It emerged the then 19-year-old Keeler had been sleeping with Profumo, then 48, and at the same time handsome Russian spy Evgeny Ivanov.
But when the news broke, Profumo lied to the House of Commons about his affair.
He was soon found out and Keeler sold her story to the News of The World for £23,000.
In June 1963, he quit in disgrace, amid allegations Keeler had been asked by Ivanov to discover from the War Minister when the West Germans might receive U.S. nuclear missiles to be stationed on their soil.
Profumo had been a rising star of the Tory Party, close to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, a favoured visitor at Buckingham Palace, a war hero and the dashing husband of actress Valerie Hobson, one of the great beauties of her day.
Ms Keeler's other lovers included A-Team actor George Peppard, legendary womaniser Warren Beatty and Prisoner of Zenda star Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
She died aged 75 in December 2017.
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