Stonehouse, a young MP, and eventually a cabinet minister, decided to throw himself into the business world as a way to guarantee an income in the likely case his party would lose the next elections. Unfortunately before long his shady banking transactions were detected by an astute Australian bank employee.

Hayes’ reputations has continued to flourish, seeing success in many high profile cases as well as the vice presidency of the London Criminal Courts Association. John Stonehouse on his way from the House of Commons to Horseferry Road magistrates court, October 1975.

Some of this obtained through conversations with his family but also the recollections of a young Julian, who witnessed much of what is shared through the innocent eyes of a child. View image in fullscreen John Stonehouse with his first wife, Barbara, and children Julia and Matthew at their country home in 1969. Hang on to your seats - the Prime Minister has told the House of Commons Liaison Committee he believes his Illegal Migration Bill is “legal. But, fascinating though that is, scrupulously documented here and revealed in all its shoddy detail, this story is much more than that. I seem to be particularly interested in UK scandals from the 60s-70s - from Kim Philby to Profumo to Jeremy Thorpe, and now, John Stonehouse.

Then he was found—on the other side of the world, in Australia—and his extraordinary story began to come to light. They gave him a variety of codenames, the last being Twister, which is suggestive of their growing disappointment with his performance. This combination drove him to do “absolutely mad, out-of-character things” and commit a form of “psychological suicide” when he attempted to disappear. This book is a brief account of the life of John Stonehouse, with particular emphasis on his botched attempt to fake his own suicide (and the subsequent trial). About the Author: JULIAN HAYES is a criminal and child-care lawyer with his firm, Berris Law, in London.

The prosecuting authorities became convinced that she had been an accomplice in his complex conspiracy to deceive. This, in a nutshell, was the life of Sidali Feddag, a young Algerian teenager, until early on the morning of the 5th January 2003, when there was a heavy knock at his door and his world exploded. She makes the fair point that Czech agents in London were “professional liars” and incentivised to exaggerate their successes to their masters to justify their existence and their expenses. After a 6 year stint as a Justices Clerk, Julian, entered private practice in the Newcastle area in 1994 and soon gained a formidable reputation representing clients in a number of areas of work in particular criminal, family and public law.