At the height of the Cold War, she became sexually involved with a married British government minister, John Profumo, as well as with a Soviet naval attaché, Yevgeny Ivanov.

A shooting incident involving a third lover caused the press to investigate her, revealing that her affairs could be threatening national security.

She was brought up by her mother, Julie Ellen (née Payne, 1923–2012),[4][5] and stepfather, Edward Huish, in a house made from two converted railway carriages in the Berkshire village of Wraysbury.

At age 17, she gave birth to a son after an affair with a United States Air Force sergeant; the child was born prematurely on 17 April 1959 and survived just six days.

[citation needed] On the weekend of 8–9 July 1961, Ward introduced Keeler to John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, at a pool party at Cliveden, the Buckinghamshire mansion owned by the 3rd Viscount Astor.

It either ended in August 1961, after the security services warned Profumo of the possible dangers of mixing with the Ward circle, or it continued with decreasing fervour until December 1961.

[12] His arrest and subsequent trial brought Keeler to public attention and provided the impetus for a national scandal to develop.

The photoshoot, at a studio on the first floor of Peter Cook's Establishment Club, with Morley was to promote a proposed film, The Keeler Affair, that was never released in the United Kingdom.

[19] After a hostile summing-up from the trial judge, Ward was convicted, but took an overdose of barbiturates and died before the jury returned its verdict and sentence could be passed.

[20] In the closing days of Ward's trial, Gordon's assault conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal when his missing witnesses were found and testified that the evidence given by Keeler was substantially false.

After her release from prison in 1964, Keeler had two brief marriages, to James Edward Levermore (22 October 1965; dissolved 1966) and Anthony Sydney Platt (18 February 1971; separated 1972; divorced 27 May 1977).

[27] On 5 December 2017, Keeler's son, Seymour Platt, announced that she had died, aged 75, the previous night at the Princess Royal University Hospital in Farnborough, London.

[32] In Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical Stephen Ward, which opened at the Aldwych Theatre in 2013, Keeler was portrayed by Charlotte Spencer.

[38] The culmination of a four-year project by artist/curator Fionn Wilson to reclaim and re-frame Keeler, it features work from twenty women artists "in order to put a female perspective on a narrative that has mostly been led by men".

[44] In Wales Arts Review, writer Craig Austin interviewed Fionn Wilson who says: Christine Keeler has always fascinated me, since I first became aware of her story via the 1989 film Scandal.

In the summer of 1963, "Christine", a pop single by Joyce Blair (released under the pseudonym "Miss X"), which parodied Keeler's involvement with Profumo, reached No.

[citation needed] Her affair with Profumo is referenced obliquely as "British politician sex" in Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire" from the 1989 album Storm Front.

[50] Keeler is referenced in the song "Post World War Two Blues" from the 1973 album Past, Present and Future by Al Stewart.