Sex,liesand high society

Claire Foy plays an aristocrat accused of revelling in a very racy love life

If, as Philip Larkin wrote, ‘sexual intercourse began in 1963’, it was thanks largely to two seismic scandals that rocked the Establishment to its core that year and shattered the Victorian mores that had for so long ruled the nation’s public life.

The Profumo affair helped to bring down Harold Macmillan’s government. But the British people were also transfixed by the salacious reports of divorce proceedings between Margaret, the Duchess of Argyll (Claire Foy, The Crown, above) and Ian Campbell, the Duke (Paul Bettany).

Now the extraordinary saga of what went on behind closed doors in the highest echelons of the aristocracy is the subject of a riveting three-part series by Sarah Phelps (Ordeal By Innocence,

The ABC Murders). Margaret’s sex life was raked over day after day in the court hearings and in the press, with every tawdry detail of her many relationships held up for scrutiny. There was particularly frenzied speculation over the identity of a ‘headless man’ with whom she was pictured in a revealing photograph.

But what the new drama uncovers is how much Margaret was the victim of a cruel era that held men and women to shockingly different standards. Foy is at her brilliant best in her portrayal of the duchess as a woman nervelessly defying convention, keeping her head held high regardless of the opprobrium heaped upon her by her peers.

As the story flashes back to the start of her marriage, we discover how this society beauty was first courted by the raffishly handsome Campbell, before he showed his true colours as their relationship broke down over the years and he did all he could to destroy her. Bettany’s duke is a captivating cad, initially charismatic but then repellent in his ruthless treatment and exploitation of Margaret and almost everyone else who crosses his path.

Having honed her gifts for period drama across several Agatha Christie adaptations, Phelps now serves up a delicious tale of aristocrats at war in a Britain only just starting to come to terms with the modern age. These are characters for whom wicked behaviour, sexism and hypocrisy are the norm, but with scalpel-sharp dialogue there is plenty of wit to leaven the darkness, and the costumes are the epitome of elegance.

This is surely not a world in which we’d want to live, but it’s one that’s fascinating to watch from a safe distance of more than half a century.