Profumo

John Dennis Profumo (1915- ), British secretary of state for war from 1960 until 5 June 1963. He resigned after admitting that he had lied to Parliament about an affair with Christine Keeler, who at the same time had been seeing Captain Yevgeni Ivanov, a Soviet attaché in London. The moral and security aspects of the scandal fed newspaper headlines for weeks and nearly forced a general election to oust his Conservative Party.

See also Profumo witnesses in this glossary.