Christine Keeler sex scandal: A showgirl or a 'Mata Hari'?

Christine Keeler, a former model whose associations during the 1960s Cold War with a British cabinet minister and a Russian diplomat led to the downfall of a Conservative government in a notorious political sex scandal died this week.

Her son, added a post on Facebook announcing that his mother had passed away due to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

Keeler a model and showgirl came into the limelight in 1963 when she was caught in a sex scandal which jolted the United Kingdom.

Keeler's relationship with the married minister of war John Profumo, whom she met when she was 19 while swimming naked at the grand Buckinghamshire estate of his colleague William Astor, shocked socially conservative Britain in the early 1960s.

Front-page revelations that she was also having an affair with a Soviet naval attache, Yevgeny Ivanov, titillated the public and exposed the social and sexual mores of Britain's secretive ruling establishment.

Profumo was forced to resign after lying to Parliament about their relationship.

The political and diplomatic firestorm brought down the Conservative government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and the 1963 'Profumo affair' is still seen as a watershed moment that changed British attitudes to sex and class.

The black-and-white photograph of a naked Keeler sitting astride an Arne Jacobsen chair remains the defining image of the lurid scandal that has been retold several times on screen and stage, including as a musical.

Keeler was later accused of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about a different relationship caught up in the Profumo Affair scandal.

She spent six months in jail.

Keeler, who changed her name to Solan, later wrote many books, including a memoir called ?The Truth at Last?, along with journalist Douglas Thompson. The book was revised in 2012 after Profumo had passed away.

She had been married twice, both of them ended in divorce. She also has two children.

Did she ever spill British secrets to the Soviets, guess we will never know...