Modern Charivari or Merely Private Peccadillo? Lord Lambton and the Archetypal Sex Scandal

Abstract

This chapter aims to investigate the relationship between shame and the political sex scandal in Britain by examining the example of Lord Lambton’s sexual misdemeanours in the early 1970s. A playboy and popular society figure Lambton was unmasked as a regular user of prostitutes and hard drugs. This compromised the government since Lambton held a junior ministerial role and his resignation ensued. Yet Lambton attempted to confront the shame that the media had sought to place upon him by a very public confession of his preferences and guilt on a BBC television programme. Although Lambton scarcely survived the fallout from this the episode set the precedent of individual making frank confessions and thereafter seeking to manage the breadth and extent of both shame and scandal that adhered to them.