Is THIS the ‘Headless Man’ seen alongside naked Duchess of Argyll in Polaroid photo that scandalised 1960s Britain? Historian believes he has FINALLY solved the case

The ‘headless man’ seen in an image revealed within the Duchess of Argyll’s scandalous divorce case was ‘virtually actually’ Tory minister Duncan Sandys, a historian has claimed.

In a 1963 courtroom listening to, Margaret Campbell was accused by her alcoholic, gambler husband, the eleventh Duke of Argyll, of taking 88 lovers.

Within the damning judgement that resulted, the Duchess was described by the choose as a ‘fully promiscuous girl’ who had indulged in ‘disgusting sexual actions’ and whose angle to marriage was ‘wholly immoral’.

The Duke additionally revealed a sequence of Polaroid pictures that confirmed his soon-to-be former spouse bare and cavorting with different males.

Certainly one of them, allegedly taken in 1956, confirmed her performing oral intercourse on a person whose face was not proven. He rapidly turned referred to as the ‘headless man’ however was by no means recognized.

Sandys, the then defence minister, was among the many 5 males who had been touted as being the doable lover.

Now, as a Channel 5 TV documentary explores her life and the divorce case that scandalised the nation, historian Christopher Wilson has instructed MailOnline that he’s satisfied Sandys was the headless man.

‘I feel it was virtually actually Duncan. He supplied to resign from the cupboard. That tells you it was him,’ he mentioned. 

‘No cupboard minister would supply to resign until they needed to.’

The rarity of Polaroid cameras on the time pointed in the direction of a authorities determine, as a result of the know-how had been loaned to the Ministry of Defence.

That truth is another excuse why Sandys is a chief ‘suspect’.  

However regardless of his supply to resign, he denied that he was the headless man.

Mr Wilson mentioned the Duchess’s remedy within the divorce case was ‘disgraceful’ and added: ‘Lately she could be a celeb. 

‘The tradition of the day then was everyone seemed down their noses at anyone who loved intercourse, which was absurd. She had a expertise for it and a love for it and she or he went for it.’

He mentioned her husband ‘s***-shamed’ her.  

When she married Ian Campbell, the eleventh Duke of Argyll, in 1951, their marriage ceremony was virtually as ostentatious because the nuptials of a member of the Home of Windsor. 

The Duchess, who was portrayed by Claire Foy in TV sequence A Very British Scandal, took the headless man thriller to her grave when she died in 1993 on the age of 80. 

The daughter of a self-made millionaire, the Duchess grew up in America and England and spent many evenings on the theatre along with her dad and mom.

She was seduced by actor David Niven on the age of 15. Their affair ended with an abortion however they remained lifelong buddies. 

As a a lot wanted debutante, she went on do date the Earl of Warwick and Max Aitken, the son of press baron Lord Beaverbrook.

In 1933 she married first husband Charles Sweeney. The couple had daughter Frances collectively however divorced in 1947.

Their separation got here after she practically died in 1943 when she fell down a raise shaft and suffered grievous accidents.

It was this ordeal which was later utilized in courtroom by her second husband to recommend that she had undergone a persona change that made her a nymphomaniac.

He was eager to not should pay again his spouse’s hundreds of thousands, which had been poured into his household seat, the dilapidated Inveraray Citadel within the Scottish Highlands. 

After her first divorce, the Duchess was briefly engaged to a Texan named Joe Thomas, a senior accomplice in Lehman Brothers, however then agreed to marry the Duke.

However the couple rapidly turned sad and launched into their very own separate affairs.

Mr Wilson known as him a ‘full a***’ and mentioned he ‘had affairs with a number of folks’.

When the Duchess’s father cut-off the cash provide that was going into the Duke’s fort, he instructed her that she might divorce him if she paid him £250,000.

However he did not get his means and so got down to get revenge.

‘He was so indignant that she withdrew her cheque guide that he determine he was going to do her in. it was outrageous actually,’ Mr Wilson mentioned.

The historian added that the brand new Channel 5 documentary, A Very British Intercourse Scandal: The Duchess & the Headless Man, ‘will get it improper’ by claiming that she ‘disappeared into obscurity’ after the divorce case. 

‘It could not be farther from the reality,’ he mentioned. 

‘She sailed into each Mayfair salon. She would exit sporting jewels, the pearls.’

Earlier than their divorce listening to, Campbell stole the Duchess’s apparently damning diaries – together with a stash of pictures – from her Mayfair flat.

Decide Lord Wheatley mentioned on the listening to: ‘I contemplate her to be a extremely sexed girl who had ceased to be happy with regular relations and had began to take pleasure in disgusting sexual actions to gratify a debase sexual urge for food.’

Mr Wilson mentioned the Duchess’s remedy was a ‘disgraceful’.

‘It was disgraceful. The truth that the choose was a part of Clan Campbell is outrageous,’ he added. 

‘She was so magnificent she rose above it. Like a real duchess she sailed on by means of life. He [the Duke] disappeared over a cliff.’

The courtroom within the 1963 case ordered the scandalous pictures to be destroyed. 

An investigation by the Mail on Sunday in 1999 uncovered a replica of the ‘headless man’ {photograph} after a supply contacted the newspaper.

A reporter was proven the picture however a call was taken to not print it.

4 additional pictures that had been proven to the courtroom confirmed an aroused man mendacity bare on a mattress.

Though his head was once more out of the body, captions learn ‘earlier than’, ‘throughout’, ‘oh!’ and ‘completed’.

A separate word written by the male lover in the identical handwriting complained that he had been unable to contact the Duchess and that he had despatched the photographs as a reminder due to their time aside.

The courtroom by no means established his identification, or whether or not it was the identical man who featured in all 5 photos.

The Duke nonetheless was positive that the person was Sigismund von Braun, a married German diplomat who had been having an affair with the Duchess across the identical time that the photographs had been mentioned to have been taken.

Her diary entries frequently featured the only letter ‘B’, who the Duke assumed referred to Braun.

He had as soon as stayed at Inveraray with is spouse Hildegard and had spent most of his time strolling alone with the Duchess.

Braun didn’t deny an affair with the Duchess however insisted it had led to 1951, earlier than she met the Duke and earlier than the picture was taken.

One other ‘suspect’ is William H Lyons – referred to as Invoice – a scion of a rich American household.

In keeping with socialite Woman Colin Campbell, who was married to the Duke of Argyll’s son, Lord Colin, the Duchess instructed her it was Invoice within the photos.

Nonetheless, the aristocrat is claimed to have first met Invoice in 1961, and the pictures had been discovered by the Duke two years beforehand.

The Duchess mentioned in her memoirs that Invoice was ‘the one man, paradoxically, whom my husband might need named within the divorce however by no means did.’

The then prime minister Harold MacMillan dissuaded Sandys from quitting his position by asking Lord Denning – the person who seemed into the Profumo Scandal – examine the identification of the mysterious lover.

The paperwork that had been drawn up had been sealed in a file and finally proven to John Main in 1993.

Sir John dominated that they shouldn’t be launched for one more 70 years.

Denning’s 5 key suspects had been Sandys, Braun, US businessman John Cohane, Peter Combe – an ex-press officer on the Savoy Lodge – and American actor Douglas Fairbanks Junior.

Denning invited all 5 males to the Treasury to quiz them within the ‘very delicate matter’.

All had been requested to signal the guests register and their handwriting was subsequently analysed.

The outcomes – when in comparison with the captions on the photographs – allegedly pointed to Fairbanks Jnr. 

He furiously denied being in any of the pictures and threatened to sue anybody who claimed in any other case. 

Mr Wilson, the writer of books together with The Windsor Knot: Charles, Camilla, and the Legacy of Diana, added: It’s a world that doesn’t exist anymore. With social media relationship and that kind of factor, all these limitations which existed then have all simply disappeared.

‘The entire level was that you’d do what you needed so long as you weren’t discovered. 

‘So long as you maintained to the surface world an image of normality. What you probably did privately was fully as much as you. You might get pleasure from what you needed.’ 

The Duchess’s daughter, Frances, Duchess of Rutland, died in January aged 86. 

The divorce case and the infamy it introduced meant that the mom and daughter’s relationship was fraught.

The pair allegedly as soon as encountered one another at a celebration. Margaret instructed her, ‘Hi there, I am your mom’. Frances is claimed to have replied, ‘I bear in mind’, earlier than turning away.

A Very British Intercourse Scandal: The Duchess & the Headless Man, airs tonight on Channel 5.