Pictured: Running errands, looking elegant and still reading the Mail!

Pictured: Running errands, looking elegant and still reading the Mail! Glamorous brunette whose love affair with rogue MP who faked his own death rocked 1970s Britain – as new ITV show on Stonehouse saga will air this week

Sheila Buckley, who had a love affair with rogue MP John Stonehouse is pictured
Mrs Buckley will be thrust back into the spotlight this week due to ITV drama
Matthew Mcfadyen is joined by wife Keeley Hawes and newcomer Emer Heatley

A life of obscurity has long-suited Sheila Buckley, pictured here running errands in a quiet Hampshire market town.

Once, however, she was the glamorous young brunette whose love affair with rogue MP and Communist traitor John Stonehouse scandalised British politics.

Now Mrs Buckley is to be thrust back into the spotlight thanks to a major TV series about the Stonehouse case, and a true crime documentary, both airing this week.

The ITV drama, Stonehouse, stars Matthew Macfadyen as the politician who faked his death off a Miami beach in 1974, in the hope of starting a new life in Australia.

She was the glamorous young brunette whose love affair with rogue MP and Communist traitor John Stonehouse scandalised British politics

Mrs Buckley returns home after being greeted by a man in a 2019 Ford Fiesta and handed flowers and a copy of The Daily Mail

His wife Barbara is played by the actor’s real-life spouse Keeley Hawes, and newcomer Emer Heatley – who bears a startling resemblance to the young Sheila – is his mistress.

The three-part series recreates Stonehouse’s rise to prominence in Harold Wilson’s government. It shows how, amid a swirl of rumours that he was in the pay of Czech spymasters, and with financial collapse looming, he copied the plot of the thriller The Day Of The Jackal in a bid to create a new identity and move halfway across the world.

(He was only caught because Australian police believed he was Lord Lucan on the run in Melbourne.)

Sheila, who had been Stonehouse’s parliamentary secretary, remained loyal to her disgraced lover throughout the scandal, flying out to meet him in Australia. The couple later married and had a son, before Stonehouse died in 1988, aged 62.

Mrs Buckley now lives alone in Romsey and is known as a keen gardener. She is understood to have worked as a book-keeper after becoming a widow

Today she lives alone in a £700,000 detached home in Romsey on the River Test. She is known to be a keen gardener and is understood to have worked as an accountant or book-keeper to support herself after losing Stonehouse, who was 21 years her senior.

She has rarely spoken of their relationship and does not appear in the documentary The Real Stonehouse, which traces the true story behind the drama.

One person who does feature is retired Metropolitan Police Detective Inspector David Townley, who speaks for the first time about the operation to repatriate Stonehouse and Sheila to London, where they faced multiple charges.

He recalls: ‘I thought [Sheila] was polite – a kind, gentle person who’d been mesmerised by Stonehouse and dragged into something she shouldn’t have got involved in. She ended up with [a suspended sentence of] two years in prison for being in love with someone. Stonehouse was a controlling person. She was young, attractive, and she clearly loved him very much.’

‘I thought [Sheila] was polite – a kind, gentle person who’d been mesmerised by Stonehouse and dragged into something she shouldn’t have got involved in,’ said Detective Inspector David Townley

Stonehouse faced 21 counts of fraud, forgery and theft. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and declared criminally bankrupt to the tune of £800,000 (about £5.5 million today).

Stonehouse’s great-nephew and author of a book about the scandal, Julian Hayes, recalls that Sheila and Stonehouse’s life post-prison was ‘mundane and ordinary’.

The Real Stonehouse will air at 9pm on ITV1 on January 5, and will be available on ITVX.

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