Until yesterday, the most cunning political mind of his generation had created for himself an enigmatic legacy of mystery and election-winning high intellect. Behind the clouds of egalitarian pipe smoke and an earthy Yorkshire accent, Harold Wilson maintained a fiction that he was a happily married man, despite the swirling long-standing rumours that he had slept with his all-powerful political secretary Marcia Williams. Now, almost 50 years after he dramatically quit Downing Street, a wholly unexpected side of the former Prime Minister has emerged, ripping aside that cosy image and casting Wilson as an unlikely lothario.
In an extraordinary intervention, Túi xách công sở nữ cao cấp two of his last surviving aides —legendary press secretary Joe Haines and Lord (Bernard) Donoughue, head of No 10's policy unit — have revealed that Wilson had an affair with a Downing Street aide 22 years his junior from 1974 until his sudden resignation in 1976. Then Prime Minister Harold Wilson with Marcia Williams, his political secretary, preparing notes for the Labour Party conference She was Janet Hewlett-Davies, a vivacious blonde who was Haines's deputy in the press office.
She was also married. Yet far from revealing an unattractive seediness at the heart of government, it is instead evidence of a touching poignancy. Haines himself stumbled on the relationship when he spotted his assistant climbing the stairs to Wilson's private quarters. Haines said it brought his boss — who was struggling to keep his divided party united — ‘a new lease of life', adding: ‘She was a great consolation to him.' To Lord Donoughue, the unexpected romance was ‘a little sunshine at sunset' as Wilson's career was a coming to an end.
The disclosure offers an intriguing glimpse of the real Harold Wilson, a man so naively unaware of what he was doing that he left his slippers under his lover's bed at Chequers, where anyone could have discovered them. With her flashing smile and voluptuous figure, it was easy to see what Wilson saw in the capable Mrs Hewlett-Davies, who continued to work in Whitehall after his resignation. But what was it about the then PM that attracted the civil servant, Túi xách nữ hàng hiệu whose career had been steady rather than spectacular?
Haines is convinced it was love. ‘I am sure of it and the joy which Harold exhibited to me suggested it was very much a love match for him, too, though he never used the word "love" to me,' he says. Wilson and his wife Mary picnic on the beach during a holiday to the Isles of Scilly Westminster has never been short of women for Túi xách công sở nữ cao cấp whom political power is an aphrodisiac strong enough to make them cheat on their husbands — but until now no one had seriously suggested Huddersfield-born Wilson was a ladies' man.
He had great charm, of course, and was a brilliant debater, but he had none of the languid confidence of other Parliamentary seducers. For one thing, he was always the most cautious of men. What he did possess, however, was a brain of considerable agility and, at the time of the affair which began during his third stint at No 10 in 1974, considerable domestic loneliness. Although his marriage to Mary — the mother of his two sons — appeared strong, she did not like the life of a political wife and pointedly refused to live in the Downing Street flat.
In an extraordinary intervention, Túi xách công sở nữ cao cấp two of his last surviving aides —legendary press secretary Joe Haines and Lord (Bernard) Donoughue, head of No 10's policy unit — have revealed that Wilson had an affair with a Downing Street aide 22 years his junior from 1974 until his sudden resignation in 1976. Then Prime Minister Harold Wilson with Marcia Williams, his political secretary, preparing notes for the Labour Party conference She was Janet Hewlett-Davies, a vivacious blonde who was Haines's deputy in the press office.
She was also married. Yet far from revealing an unattractive seediness at the heart of government, it is instead evidence of a touching poignancy. Haines himself stumbled on the relationship when he spotted his assistant climbing the stairs to Wilson's private quarters. Haines said it brought his boss — who was struggling to keep his divided party united — ‘a new lease of life', adding: ‘She was a great consolation to him.' To Lord Donoughue, the unexpected romance was ‘a little sunshine at sunset' as Wilson's career was a coming to an end.The disclosure offers an intriguing glimpse of the real Harold Wilson, a man so naively unaware of what he was doing that he left his slippers under his lover's bed at Chequers, where anyone could have discovered them. With her flashing smile and voluptuous figure, it was easy to see what Wilson saw in the capable Mrs Hewlett-Davies, who continued to work in Whitehall after his resignation. But what was it about the then PM that attracted the civil servant, Túi xách nữ hàng hiệu whose career had been steady rather than spectacular?
Haines is convinced it was love. ‘I am sure of it and the joy which Harold exhibited to me suggested it was very much a love match for him, too, though he never used the word "love" to me,' he says. Wilson and his wife Mary picnic on the beach during a holiday to the Isles of Scilly Westminster has never been short of women for Túi xách công sở nữ cao cấp whom political power is an aphrodisiac strong enough to make them cheat on their husbands — but until now no one had seriously suggested Huddersfield-born Wilson was a ladies' man.
He had great charm, of course, and was a brilliant debater, but he had none of the languid confidence of other Parliamentary seducers. For one thing, he was always the most cautious of men. What he did possess, however, was a brain of considerable agility and, at the time of the affair which began during his third stint at No 10 in 1974, considerable domestic loneliness. Although his marriage to Mary — the mother of his two sons — appeared strong, she did not like the life of a political wife and pointedly refused to live in the Downing Street flat.