Peter Parker

The establishment was always covering up for Bob Boothby

Along with his 30-year affair with Dorothy Macmillan, the Tory minister’s penchant for the criminal underworld also needed to be buried

Robert Boothby and Ronnie Kray ‘talking business’ in June 1969. Credit: Getty Images
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  • The Peer and the Gangster: A Very British Cover-up

    Daniel Smith

    History Press, pp. 256, £20

Just after John Pearson finished writing The Profession of Violence, his celebrated biography of the Krays, both his and his agent’s officeswere broken into. Letters from Lord Boothby to Ronnie Kray had disappeared, as had a copy of the book’s manuscript. Pearson then received a telephone call from the high-powered lawyer Lord Goodman, who warned him that the book libelled Boothby.

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