Review: Scandal at Dolphin Square, A Notorious History. A guest post by LH Member Stephen Hoare.
At its grand opening in November 1936 Dolphin Square, a now notorious Thameside development of luxury rented apartments in Pimlico was described by its developer Costain in a promotional pamphlet as appealing to “Members of Parliament, people of title, Government Officials and Professional men” ….”by reason of its unique location and exceptional appointments”.
Written by former Labour MP for Rochdale Simon Danczuk and journalist Daniel Smith, Scandal at Dolphin Square investigates why and how this bolthole for the rich and famous came to be associated with many of the major political and sex scandals of the past ten decades.
The proximity to Parliament and the West End and the privacy afforded by the complex attracted a cast of characters that included MPs of every political persuasion but also spies, actors, businessmen, prostitutes and con men. This painstakingly researched history shines a light into some very murky corners and tells some entertaining and gripping stories in the process that shed light on the social history of our recent past.
The Swinging Sixties brought several of Dolphin Square’s rackety residents into sharp relief. The arrest of the outwardly respectable civil servant John Vassall on charges of spying laid bare Britain’s vulnerability to Soviet espionage. Christine Keeler who once entertained her lovers in Dolphin Square – an affair that entrapped Secretary of State for War, John Profumo and brought down a government – and the Kray brothers’ association with the bisexual peer Lord Boothby are just some of the highlights. On the lighter side we learn about Sid James and Babs Windsor’s love nest!
Danczuk and Smith helpfully explain the site’s history from being the yards and offices of the Pimlico’s original developer Cubitt to its later use as an army clothing store to its eventual sale and purchase by builder Costain. The fourteen residential blocks each named after a British naval hero were serviced by an in-house restaurant, brasserie, fitness club, swimming pool, shops and formal gardens enabling the entire development to function as a self-contained urban village.
Dolphin Square was home to Bud Flanagan and members of the Crazy Gang, 40s screen siren Margaret Lockwood, Dina Dors and Peter Finch. It was also wartime HQ of Maxwell Knight, founder of MI5, the man who recruited Ian Fleming whose name is immortalised as ‘M’ in the James Bond films and novels.
Danczuk and Smith’s expertise as political commentators comes to the fore in their trawling of major political scandals and many pages are devoted to the story of leader of Westminster Council Dame Shirley Porter’s attempted gerrymandering by ensuring council homes were sold to potential Tory voters in the 1980s. Decades later the Square featured heavily in the “expenses scandal” exposed by the Daily Telegraph which found MPs who rented flats making false or exaggerated claims for reimbursement.
Finally, in 2014, the most recent and arguably the most disturbing scandal to have rocked the political class were the allegations of a paedophile ring of prominent MPs, statesmen and senior members of the armed forces made by a victim known as ‘Nick’. Within eighteen months the police investigation known as Operation Midland was disbanded due to lack of credible evidence which ‘Nick’ himself was prosecuted under his real name of Carl Beech.
There is no smoke without fire as the saying goes and Danczuk and Smith’s investigations – they interviewed dozens of prominent residents and former ‘Dolphinites’ – hint at far more than the police were ever able to prove and appear to involve crimes going back decades.
Altogether this is a well-researched London history that focusses on the seamy side. But it is written with wit and verve. It is essential reading for anyone wanting to know more about the lives of the rich and infamous.
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Scandal at Dolphin Square A Notorious History (288pp) by Simon Danczuk and Daniel Smith , is published by The History Press 2022, cover price £20 ISBN 978 0 7509 9714 0
London Historians' Blog 
If you enjoyed looking at Scandal at Dolphin Square then you are going to love this non-promotional anecdote about real spies and authors from the espionage genre whether you’re a le Carré connoisseur, a Deighton disciple, a Fleming fanatic, a Herron hireling or a Macintyre marauder. If you don’t love all such things you might learn something so read on! It’s a must read for espionage cognoscenti.
As Kim Philby (codename Stanley) and KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky (codename Sunbeam) would have told you in their heyday, there is one category of secret agent that is often overlooked … namely those who don’t know they have been recruited. For more on that topic we suggest you read Beyond Enkription (explained below) and a recent article on that topic by the ex-spook Bill Fairclough. The article can be found at TheBurlingtonFiles website in the News Section. The article (dated July 21, 2021) is about “Russian Interference”; it’s been read well over 20,000 times.
Now talking of Gordievsky, John le Carré described Ben Macintyre’s fact based novel, The Spy and The Traitor, as “the best true spy story I have ever read”. It was of course about Kim Philby’s Russian counterpart, a KGB Colonel named Oleg Gordievsky, codename Sunbeam. In 1974 Gordievsky became a double agent working for MI6 in Copenhagen which was when Bill Fairclough aka Edward Burlington unwittingly launched his career as a secret agent for MI6. Fairclough and le Carré knew of each other: le Carré had even rejected Fairclough’s suggestion in 2014 that they collaborate on a book. As le Carré said at the time, “Why should I? I’ve got by so far without collaboration so why bother now?” A realistic response from a famous expert in fiction in his eighties!
Philby and Gordievsky never met Fairclough, but they did know Fairclough’s handler, Colonel Alan McKenzie aka Colonel Alan Pemberton CVO MBE. It is little wonder therefore that in Beyond Enkription, the first fact based novel in The Burlington Files espionage series, genuine double agents, disinformation and deception weave wondrously within the relentless twists and turns of evolving events. Beyond Enkription is set in 1974 in London, Nassau and Port au Prince. Edward Burlington, a far from boring accountant, unwittingly started working for Alan McKenzie in MI6 and later worked eyes wide open for the CIA.
What happens is so exhilarating and bone chilling it makes one wonder why bother reading espionage fiction when facts are so much more breathtaking. The fact based novel begs the question, were his covert activities in Haiti a prelude to the abortion of a CIA sponsored Haitian equivalent to the Cuban Bay of Pigs? Why was his father Dr Richard Fairclough, ex MI1, involved? Richard was of course a confidant of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who became chief adviser to JFK during the Cuban missile crisis.
Len Deighton and Mick Herron could be forgiven for thinking they co-wrote the raw noir anti-Bond narrative, Beyond Enkription. Atmospherically it’s reminiscent of Ted Lewis’ Get Carter of Michael Caine fame. If anyone ever makes a film based on Beyond Enkription they’ll only have themselves to blame if it doesn’t go down in history as a classic espionage thriller.
By the way, the maverick Bill Fairclough had quite a lot in common with Greville Wynne (famous for his part in helping to reveal Russian missile deployment in Cuba in 1962) and has also even been called “a posh Harry Palmer”. As already noted, Bill Fairclough and John le Carré (aka David Cornwell) knew of each other but only long after Cornwell’s MI6 career ended thanks to Kim Philby shopping all Cornwell’s supposedly secret agents in Europe. Coincidentally, the novelist Graham Greene used to work in MI6 reporting to Philby and Bill Fairclough actually stayed in Hôtel Oloffson during a covert op in Haiti (explained in Beyond Enkription) which was at the heart of Graham Greene’s spy novel The Comedians. Funny it’s such a small world!
Thank-you for this comprehensive comment which I should have acknowledged earlier. Very interesting.