Inside Story: Politics, Intrigue and Treachery from Thatcher to Brexit. Philip Webster

from John Major, the former prime minister, confirming that he had an affair with Edwina Currie.

      It was the trigger that meant a specially prepared, secret edition of the paper – replacing a phoney earlier one that had been sent out to fool rivals – could be published and a story that was to shake the political and non-political worlds would arrive at the breakfast tables. I have been told by many people over the years that it was one of those jaw-dropping stories that made them remember where they were when they first heard it. Major was seen as the ultimate grey man, while Currie had been one of the country’s most flamboyant political figures with a gift for publicity matched only by Margaret Thatcher.

      It was the culmination of an extraordinary cloak-and-dagger operation that depended on the few people who knew about the contents of Currie’s diaries maintaining complete and utter confidentiality about them. It was a scheme that could have gone wrong at any point. It would be an astonishing scoop for the publishers Little, Brown and for the paper, which had paid to serialize it, but it was no good to either if the story leaked and it ran across the front pages of other papers as well.

      I had been assigned the task of reading the diaries, satisfying myself that the story was true and plausible, and then assuring everyone else in the loop that it was. Further, my job would be to write it up as the main front-page story, known in the industry as the ‘splash’, and most important of all to contact John Major on the day, breaking the news to him that a secret he had lived with for much of his life was out, and getting a reaction from him if that was at all possible. That was all!

      Robert Thomson was adamant that the story would not be published unless Major had been told. Normal journalistic courtesy and propriety demanded it. Whether he would confirm it, we had no way of knowing. If he denied it, we were in trouble. But getting to him was paramount. And on the night of 27 September 2002, I nearly failed in one of the most critical missions an editor has ever asked me to undertake.

      The story of how it almost went horribly wrong has never been told – until now.

      Robert had called me down to the office two weeks beforehand. He had been editor for six months, having joined The Times from the Financial Times. We had immediately struck up a good relationship, with me organizing a series of lunches and dinners at which he got to know leading politicians. He asked me what I knew about Edwina Currie and John Major and whether it was possible they had ever had a relationship. I was agog. He knew that, if true, it was an extraordinary story. But having spent most of his working life away from British politics, he was testing whether I saw it in the same light. My reaction told him. He asked me to read the diaries – but without telling a soul.

      A manuscript arrived at my home by special delivery and I spent the next few nights racing through it, growing more and more stunned. I knew Major pretty well, and in the years before he soared to very high office he was someone with whom I often discussed the issues of the day. At this stage I was reading only the early entries in the diaries and Currie was writing intimately about her relationship with a man she called ‘B’. She called him B for no other reason than he was the second man in her life.

      A typical entry was this: ‘Spoke to B this evening – I’m so glad he was in. Oddly enough I need the diary more now that he’s so busy. I wonder if it will start to fade. It’s so hard when I don’t see him. Still, I’ve thought that every year and we are still at it.’ The affair had started in 1984 and this was September 1987.

      Another entry read: ‘I saw B again on Friday. I was in the area where he lives and his wife offered their home for a rest, which I appreciated. It’s nice, a bit plain and unimaginative. To my horror, the magic started to work again and in a very big way. When we parted he held my hand a long time and squeezed it, even though other people were there.’

      Or this one: ‘Then B came along, and he was so bloody nice and attractive, and so quiet in public that it was a challenge to unearth the real person and to seduce him – easy! And it was unexpectedly spectacularly good for such a long time.’ This was not my normal terrain but I was riveted.

      There were enough clues for me to realize quite quickly that B was indeed John Major. When I raced on to much later entries, after the affair ended in 1988 when B had become ‘John’, it was confirmed in my mind that, unless Currie had been victim to a lengthy fantasy, one of the most unlikely of political couplings had happened. I had to smile. Major was a Conservative whip when the affair started. The whips make it their business to know the private business of every one of their MPs, allegedly keeping notes in a black book. Here was one ex-whip who had kept a massive secret from his colleagues; even more surprising was that the affair was with one of the more colourful and controversial of their charges.

      Brian MacArthur, our associate editor who was in charge of the whole operation and whose extensive publishing-world contacts helped us to get a first sighting of the diaries, had also read the extracts. I told Robert that it was clear it was Major. He asked me point-blank: ‘Do you believe it?’ I replied that I had to believe it, although if I had not seen the evidence I would not have done.

      Next came a trip to the publishers Little, Brown on Waterloo Bridge, where MacArthur, George Brock (managing editor), myself, Ursula Mackenzie (the publisher), Alan Samson (the book’s editor), and our publicity chief, Mary Fulton, discussed issues such as where Currie would be over the crucial weekend after next and how I would approach Major. Our lawyer, Pat Burge, had warned from the outset that there might be two grounds for action of which we had to be aware – defamation if the story was wrong and breach of privacy. At that meeting the greatest worry was that Major might attempt to take out a privacy injunction when he learnt of what we intended to run. The general view was that I should leave the call to Major as late as I dared, to minimize that risk. But I stressed again the editor’s bottom-line demand: Major MUST be contacted.

      Roy Greenslade, of The Guardian, wrote later that it was at a meeting in Wapping on 20 August that MacArthur and Thomson had first been told of the explosive, alleged contents of the diaries after signing confidentiality agreements. Both had agreed it was a great story, but asked if it could possibly be true. They were assured that it was. The publishers had come to The Times first because it was there that Currie hoped the book would be serialized.

      As Friday, 27 September approached there was still in my mind, and in those of the handful who knew, that nagging doubt about what would happen when I got to Major with the news. Would he deny it, would he apply for an injunction, would he put out a press release telling the world in general and scuppering our exclusive? Knowing him, the latter was unlikely, but I was unsure on the other points.

      No one in my office at Westminster was aware of what I had been doing. I went into the office very early that Friday morning and got the splash story written before anyone else appeared. I had during the week collected every possible number for Major – two office numbers in London, a Huntingdon constituency number, and several numbers for former close aides and friends. He was no longer in the Commons and my contact with him had been limited since the 1997 election defeat.

      Peter Riddell – our chief political commentator – arrived back from the Lib Dem conference in the late morning. Peter was always my most trusted adviser and I confided in him about what we had got and showed him some of the relevant entries in the manuscript. If I was ever in danger of going over the top with a story, I could rely on Peter to pull me back from the brink, but this morning he said something I just did not want to hear. He wondered whether it was all an Edwina fantasy, the very doubt that had entered the head of Robert Thomson, me and others when we first learnt about it. At this stage I had not explained to Peter quite how much was at stake – the cost of the memoirs, the phoney first edition, the rest.

      But I assured him I was satisfied and tried not to let any further doubts enter my head. The day went slowly by. At about 4 p.m. I was itching to call Major’s office number, but it was still too early. I would have some explaining to do if I called prematurely and an injunction swiftly followed.

      At The Times the secret had been kept for thirty-eight days despite the number of people knowing about it gradually increasing, as the marketing director, picture editor, Ginny Dougary (who was to interview Currie in advance), and the night and design editors who