"A Very English Scandal, " by John Preston
The sub-title of this book is "Sex, Lies, and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment." It covers a prolonged period in which two friends of Jeremy Thorpe--the leader of the Liberal party in the 'sixties and 'seventies--attempted to deal with a young man whom Thorpe had seduced and who seemed to be poised to blackmail him by producing a set of love letters that Thorpe had written to him. At that time, male homosexual relations were illegal, and a significant number of men were serving prison sentences for their homosexual activities.
Two of Thorpe's friends--Peter Bessell, a serial womanizer who seemed in thrall to Thorpe, and David Holmes, a lover of Thorpe--kept the young man, Norman Scott, at bay in a variety of ways. But as time went on, Thorpe became convinced that Scott had to be killed, and he urged Bessell and Thorpe to arrange it. There was a lot of stalling on their part, but Holmes seems to have been the one who set a murder plot in train. It ended in a ludicrous outcome, with Scott and a large dog being driven out onto Exmoor by the hit-man, who first shot the dog, but when he turned to shoot Scott, the gun jammed, Scott escaped, and the police were called. The hit-man was found guilty of assault with a dangerous weapon and sentenced to two years in prison. Subsequently, the various details of the plot became known to the authorities and Thorpe and three others, including the hit-man, were prosecuted for 'conspiracy to murder.'
The main witnesses for the prosecution were Peter Bessell and Norman Scott. Both were subjected to withering cross-examinations that painted them as serial liars. The summing-up by the judge, Sir Joseph Cantley, was notorious for its bias and its characterization of Bessell and Scott as wholly unreliable. (Peter Cooke did a famous take-off of the summing up; find it on You-Tube)
Thorpe and the others were acquitted by the jury, but this was certainly not the view of the public at large, and Thorpe's career was effectively over. He stood again in his constituency at the next General Election but lost by a substantial majority.
One critic has summed the book up as follows:
"What can be said, however, is that this is probably the most forensic, elegantly written and compelling account of one of the 20th century’s great political scandals and it could not have been told in its entirety while Thorpe, who died in December 2014, was alive. It’s a real page-turner. An entertaining mix of tragedy and farce, involving people in high and low places, amply justifying its subtitle, “Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment”
I certainly turned the pages, finishing it in the course of a day when I had little else to do .