A photo of Labour MP John Stonehouse walking with his Czech spymaster before he faked his own death has been revealed for the first time.
The grainy black and white image was taken secretly by the Czech secret service in 1967 so it could be used as potential ‘kompromat’ to manipulate Stonehouse into revealing more secrets.
It shows Stonehouse and his Czech controller Robert Husak walking down Lowndes Street in London’s Belgravia towards the Carlton Tower Hotel at the height of the Cold War.
The picture was filed away in case it was ever needed to blackmail Stonehouse, who was then an aviation minister in Harold Wilson’s Government.
It remained hidden away in Czech security service archives – long after Stonehouse’s spying activities were exposed – until it was recently found among a cache of photographs.
The image of the two men in dark suits and ties, and carrying newspapers is now due to be shown in the forthcoming Channel 4 documentary The Spy Who Died Twice.
The image, covertly taken by the Czech secret service, shows Stonehouse and his controller Robert Husak walking down Lowndes Street in London’s Belgravia towards the Carlton Tower Hotel at the height of the Cold War
Stonehouse is alleged to have first started spying for the Czechoslovakia in 1959 after he was promised help with his political ambitions and financial rewards in return for information
Keeley Winstone, the director of the documentary, discovered the pictures while working on her co-authored book Agent Twister.
The book tells of Stonehouse’s life and gets its title from one of his codenames Twister, given to him by his handlers.
She said: ‘I was gobsmacked when I first unearthed these photographs in the files when researching my book.
‘The Czechs took them in the hope that they could compromise Stonehouse into giving them better intelligence. Not only do they confirm the relationship, but they’re incredibly evocative of the 1960s and the era of Cold War espionage.’
Stonehouse famously faked his own death in 1974 – seven years after the picture of him with Husak was taken – when he left a pile of clothes on a beach in Miami to make it appear he had drowned or been taken by a shark.
He then assumed a new identity with a false passport and flew to Australia to escape his financial troubles and marriage, starting a new life with his young mistress and parliamentary secretary Sheila Buckley.
His wife of 27 years Barbara, the mother of his three children, was convinced that he had died until police arrested him in Melbourne nearly five weeks after his faked disappearance.
Australian police had initially suspected he was runaway peer Lord Lucan who was wanted for the murder of his children’s nanny Sandra Rivett.
Stonehouse was subsequently deported back to the UK and jailed for seven years for fraud after an Old Bailey trial in 1976, forcing him to stand down as an MP.
His disappearance was inevitably likened to the plot from the 1970s BBC comedy The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, first screened just weeks after his trial.
The hit comedy featured middle class Perrin played by Leonard Rossiter, faking his death by stripping off and jumping into the sea to escape his boring life.
Stonehouse pictured during a trip to the US in 1967 ten years after he was first elected as a Labour Co-operative MP
Stonehouse was first elected as a Labour Co-operative MP in 1957 when he became Britain’s youngest MP at the age of 32.
Known for his dashing good looks, he was tipped to be a potential future Labour leader and Prime Minister.
He made a name for himself in 1959 by speaking out against the white minority Government in Southern Rhodesia during a fact finding trip to the African country which led to him being deported.
Stonehouse is alleged to have first started spying for the Czechoslovakian Security Services (StB) in 1959 after he was promised help with his political ambitions and financial rewards in return for information.
He was said to have been targeted after the spy network noted his weakness for women and his numerous affairs, despite being a married father-of-two.
His first
