The ‘headless man’ seen in a picture revealed in the Duchess of Argyll’s scandalous divorce case was ‘almost certainly’ Tory minister Duncan Sandys, a historian has claimed.
In a 1963 court hearing, Margaret Campbell was accused by her alcoholic, gambler husband, the 11th Duke of Argyll, of taking 88 lovers.
In the damning judgement that resulted, the Duchess was described by the judge as a ‘completely promiscuous woman’ who had indulged in ‘disgusting sexual activities’ and whose attitude to marriage was ‘wholly immoral’.
The Duke also revealed a series of Polaroid photographs that showed his soon-to-be former wife naked and cavorting with other men.
One of them, allegedly taken in 1956, showed her performing oral sex on a man whose face was not shown. He quickly became known as the ‘headless man’ but was never identified.
Sandys, the then defence minister, was among the five men who were touted as being the possible lover.
Now, as a Channel 5 TV documentary explores her life and the divorce case that scandalised the nation, historian Christopher Wilson has told MailOnline that he is convinced Sandys was the headless man.
‘I think it was almost certainly Duncan. He offered to resign from the cabinet. That tells you it was him,’ he said.
The ‘headless man’ seen in pictures revealed in the Duchess of Argyll’s scandalous divorce case was ‘almost certainly’ Tory minister Duncan Sandys, a historian has claimed. Above: The Duchess with her new husband, Ian Campbell, the 11th Duke of Argyll, on their wedding day in 1951
Duncan Sandys (above), the then defence minister, was among the five men who were touted as being the possible lover
‘No cabinet minister would offer to resign unless they had to.’
The rarity of Polaroid cameras at the time pointed towards a government figure, because the technology had been loaned to the Ministry of Defence.
That fact is another reason why Sandys is a prime ‘suspect’.
But despite his offer to resign, he denied that he was the headless man.
Mr Wilson said the Duchess’s treatment in the divorce case was ‘disgraceful’ and added: ‘These days she would be a celebrity.
‘The culture of the day then was everybody looked down their noses at anybody who enjoyed sex, which was absurd. She had a talent for it and a love for it and she went for it.’
He said her husband ‘s***-shamed’ her.
When she married Ian Campbell, the 11th Duke of Argyll, in 1951, their wedding was almost as ostentatious as the nuptials of a member of the House of Windsor.
The Duchess, who was portrayed by Claire Foy in TV series A Very British Scandal, took the headless man mystery to her grave when she died in 1993 at the age of 80.
The daughter of a self-made millionaire, the Duchess grew up in America and England and spent many evenings at the theatre with her parents.
She was seduced by actor David Niven at the age of 15. Their affair ended with an abortion but they remained lifelong friends.
As a much sought after 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 together but divorced in 1947.
Their separation came after she nearly died in 1943 when she fell down a lift shaft and suffered grievous injuries.
It was this ordeal which was later used in court by her second husband to suggest that she had undergone a personality change that made her a nymphomaniac.
He was keen not to have to pay back his wife’s millions, which had been poured into his family seat, the dilapidated Inveraray Castle in the Scottish Highlands.
In a 1963 court hearing, Margaret Campbell was accused by her alcoholic, gambler husband, the 11th Duke of Argyll, of taking 88 lovers
Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll outside the law courts in the Strand on the second day of her case
The Duchess of Argyll with Ian Campbell, her second husband, in April 1952
Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, seen in her car when she was a debutante in 1930
After her first divorce, the Duchess was briefly engaged to a Texan named Joe Thomas, a senior partner in Lehman Brothers, but then agreed to marry the Duke.
But the couple quickly became unhappy and embarked on their own separate affairs.
Mr Wilson called him a ‘complete a***’ and said he ‘had affairs with lots of people’.
When the Duchess’s father cut-off the money supply that was going into the Duke’s castle, he told her that she could divorce him if she paid him £250,000.
But he failed to get his way and so set out to get revenge.
‘He was so angry that she withdrew her cheque book that he decide he was going to do her in. it was outrageous really,’ Mr Wilson said.
The historian added that the new Channel 5 documentary, A Very British Sex Scandal: The Duchess & the Headless Man, ‘gets it wrong’ by claiming that she ‘disappeared into obscurity’ after the divorce case.
‘It couldn’t be further from the truth,’ he said.
‘She sailed into every Mayfair salon. She would go out wearing jewels, the pearls.’
Before their divorce hearing, Campbell stole the Duchess’s apparently damning diaries – along with a stash of photographs – from her Mayfair flat.
Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, with her daughter Frances Helen Sweeney and her dachshund, 1955
The mother and daughter allegedly once encountered each other at a party. Margaret told her, ‘Hello, I’m your mother’. Frances is said to have replied, ‘I remember’, before turning away. Above: The pair in 1955
Judge Lord Wheatley said at the hearing: ‘I consider her to be a highly sexed woman who had ceased to be satisfied with normal relations and had started to indulge in disgusting sexual activities to gratify a debase sexual appetite.’
Mr Wilson said the Duchess’s treatment was a ‘disgraceful’.
‘It was disgraceful. The fact that the judge was part of Clan Campbell is outrageous,’ he added.
‘She was so magnificent she rose above it. Like a true duchess she sailed on through life. He [the Duke] disappeared over a cliff.’
The court in the 1963 case ordered the scandalous images to be destroyed.
An investigation by the Mail on Sunday in 1999 uncovered a copy of the ‘headless man’ photograph after a source contacted the newspaper.
A reporter was shown the image but a decision was taken not to print it.
Four further images that were shown to the court showed an aroused man lying naked on a bed.
Although his head was again out of the frame, captions read ‘before’, ‘during’, ‘oh!’ and ‘finished’.
A separate note written by the male lover in the same handwriting complained that he had been unable to contact the Duchess and that he had sent the images as a reminder because of their time apart.
The court never established his identity, or whether it was the same man who featured in all five pictures.
The Duchess of Argyll arrives at a concert in London in December 1985
The Duchess of Argyll with her poodle in October 1975. She refused to be cowed by her court humiliation
The Duke however was sure that the individual was Sigismund von Braun, a married German diplomat who had been having an affair with the Duchess around the same time that the images were said to have been taken.
Her diary entries regularly featured the single letter ‘B’, who the Duke assumed referred to Braun.
He had once stayed at Inveraray with is wife Hildegard and had spent most of his time walking alone with the Duchess.
Braun did not deny an affair with the Duchess but insisted it had ended in 1951, before she met the Duke and before the image was taken.
Another ‘suspect’ is William H Lyons – known as Bill – a scion of a wealthy American family.
According to socialite Lady Colin Campbell, who was married to the Duke of Argyll’s son, Lord Colin, the Duchess told her it was Bill in the pictures.
However, the aristocrat is said to have first met Bill in 1961, and the photographs were found by the Duke two years beforehand.
The Duchess said in her memoirs that Bill was ‘the one man, ironically, whom my husband might have named in the divorce but never did.’
The then prime minister Harold MacMillan dissuaded Sandys from quitting his role by asking Lord Denning – the man who looked into the Profumo Scandal – investigate the identity of the mysterious lover.
The documents that were drawn up were sealed in a dossier and eventually shown to John Major in 1993.
Sir John ruled that they should not be released for another 70 years.
Denning’s five key suspects were Sandys, Braun, US businessman John Cohane, Peter Combe – an ex-press officer at the Savoy Hotel – and American actor Douglas Fairbanks Junior.
Denning invited all five men to the Treasury to quiz them in the ‘very delicate matter’.
All were asked to sign the visitors register and their handwriting was subsequently analysed.
The results – when compared to the captions on the images – allegedly pointed to Fairbanks Jnr.
He furiously denied being in any of the photographs and threatened to sue anyone who claimed otherwise.
The Duchess with her first husband, Charles Sweeney, on their wedding day in 1933
Claire Foy as the Duchess of Argyll in BBC drama A Very British Scandal
Mr Wilson, the author of books including The Windsor Knot: Charles, Camilla, and the Legacy of Diana, added: It is a world that doesn’t exist anymore. With social media dating and that sort of thing, all those barriers which existed then have all just disappeared.
‘The whole point was that you would do what you wanted as long as you weren’t found out.
‘As long as you maintained to the outside world a picture of normality. What you did privately was entirely up to you. You could enjoy what you wanted.’
The Duchess’s daughter, Frances, Duchess of Rutland, died in January aged 86.
The divorce case and the infamy it brought meant that the mother and daughter’s relationship was fraught.
The pair allegedly once encountered each other at a party. Margaret told her, ‘Hello, I’m your mother’. Frances is said to have replied, ‘I remember’, before turning away.
A Very British Sex Scandal: The Duchess & the Headless Man, airs tonight on Channel 5.
