Probably nobody under 40 in Britain or 50 in New Zealand, unless they're studying political science at university.
The scandals all three were involved in make New Zealand's parliamentary ones - groping secretaries, stealing money meant to provide books and comforts for Maori children, slanging off at waiters in restaurants and accessing confidential emails between ministers and journalists - seem like the sins of children.
The trouble with An English Affair, though, is that it takes 244 pages to actually get to the sex, drugs, spies and rock 'n' roll. Not that the build-up was in any way boring.
As an ageing Anglophobe born in Britain, and whose local MP (another Ian, actually) lost his seat after groping a guardsman in St James' Park, most of the names and principals and incidences of ''sex, class and power'' that crop up in Davenport-Hines' book are familiar to me.
What was fresh news concerned the battle between the established order represented by old money, and the rise of entrepreneurs, often Jewish and/or from mainland Europe, as was Profumo's family.
I also never knew that Harold Macmillan, prime minister of Britain from 1957 to 1962, was seriously wounded in World War 1, had a wife whose middle name was ''infidelity'' but whom he wouldn't divorce, or that he was a member of the wealthy Macmillan publishing family.
Closer to home, the author also lifts the lid on the foibles of the newspaper publishing moguls of the period, the oddball journalists, and the rise of the gutter press, throwing money at the principals involved in order to get a scoop and sell a million more copies.
Lastly, there are the spies and traitors: Russians offering big roubles to British government clerks for information to give their country the edge in the arms race.
There's a wealth of information, anecdotes and detail in An English Affair to provide endless reading pleasure to our landed gentry, politicians, journalists, nightclub owners, drug dealers, spies, not to mention ladies of the night and their protectors; and, of course, little people who go about their business paying their bills, keeping the peace, and generally living an anonymous life and wishing.
Oh, how Davenport-Hines' compellingly readable book made me wish I hadn't emigrated.
- Ian Williams is a Dunedin writer and composer.
