Cleveden, sometimes Cliveden (English Cliveden / klɪvdən /) - a neo-renaissance country palace on a high hill above the Thames in Buckinghamshire, built in the 1850s by Charles Barry (architect of the Palace of Westminster) for the Duke of Sutherland. The palace, erected on the site of the baroque residence of the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, serves as one of the best examples of the eclectic trend in Victorian architecture.
In 1893 the owner of Cleveland, the Duke of Westminster, sold it to the American nouveau riche Lord Astor, who invested a lot of money in further decorating the estate. Baroque sculptures arranged in the garden were brought to him from Clevelin from Italy. Lady Nancy Astor (1879-1964) became famous as the first woman elected to the British Parliament; in the palace hangs her famous portrait of Sargent's brush. At her Cleveden became a favorite meeting place of the London society.
In the middle of the twentieth century, the "clavendan (clavendan) clique" was perceived by the left-wing circles as the embodiment of the "world behind the scenes", and in the 1960s Cleveden with the high society orgies figured in the political affair of John Profumo, further impairing his reputation. The Astors gave way to the Cleveden Manor to the National Fund, which in the 1970s gave it to Stanford University to accommodate the British branch. Currently, a five-star hotel is located in Cleveden.
KGB officers used "bugs" to listen to conversations in the bedroom between British Defense Minister John Profumo and his mistress Christina Keeler, reports The Daily Mail, referring to the newly declassified dossier. The KGB agent, who was Keeler's lover, also persuaded her to question Profumo about the British nuclear arsenal, the documents say. "Judging by these dossiers, the Russians extracted a lot of information that risked weakening the security of the West," writes journalist Jason Lewis, explaining that these facts disprove the traditional version that the case of Profumo did not damage the UK.
"The dossier also provides details of the high society parties that grew into unbridled orgies, on one of them a certain minister, stripped naked, served as a waiter," the newspaper writes.
Profumo did not know that his mistress Keeler had a connection with the spy Yevgeny Ivanov, an employee of the Soviet embassy in London, the publication recalls. When the case opened in 1963, Profmumo resigned, and Prime Minister Macmillan's office was in a precarious position.