Wilson had affair while in No 10, advisers reveal

Former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson had an affair with his deputy press secretary during his time in No 10, two of his advisers have revealed.

Joe Haines and Lord Bernard Donoughue kept the secret for nearly 50 years.

Lord Donoughue told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme he also knew about the affair.

There were persistent rumours that Mr Wilson, who was married, had an affair with his political secretary, Marcia Williams, later Baroness Falkender. He repeatedly denied the claims.

However, this is the first time there has been any suggestion of a romantic relationship with Ms Hewlett-Davies, who was Mr Haines's deputy as press secretary and was also married.

Mr Haines told the Times Ms Hewlett-Davies confessed to the affair "by pure chance" after he spotted her climbing the staircase to the prime minister's room in Downing Street one evening in 1974, during his second term in No 10.

When asked what she was doing, she then revealed the relationship to him.

On another occasion, in 1976, Mr Haines said he had given up his usual room at Chequers, which had an adjoining door the prime minister's for Ms Hewlett-Davies, and Mr Wilson left his slippers under her bed.

Ms Hewlett-Davies was 22 years younger than Mr Wilson and in her thirties at the time.

Lord Donoughue, who was the head of Mr Wilson's policy unit and made a Labour peer in 1985, said he was told about the relationship by Mr Haines and later raised it indirectly with the prime minister.

"Towards the end, because he had a lot of time on his hands, he used to take me for walks around Number 10 to have a little gossip," he told Today.

"On one such walk, he in a very Wilsonian way, because he wasn't a very direct person, he said he was very pleased I was a friend of Janet...

"And I replied by saying I thought Janet was a lovely and terrific person. And I then added in the Wilsonian way, which I'd learned from him, and I'm very pleased your relationship is so close and so good."

Lord Donoughue said the PM then told him "he'd never been happier".

At the end of his premiership Mr Wilson was often portrayed as running a divided government, paranoid about the security services and showing the first signs of dementia.

However, Lord Donoughue said the affair was "a little sunshine at sunset".

He said the two advisers had kept the secret until now because "we thought it would be used damagingly against them at that time" and wanted to wait until they had both died.

After Ms Hewlett-Davies died last October, they decided to reveal the relationship to ensure the "full story" of Mr Wilson's premiership was told.

"I felt as a sometime historian this was important to go in the historical record of Wilson," Lord Donoughue added.

He told the BBC Mr Wilson had also had a brief sexual relationship with Baroness Falkender 20 years earlier, despite the former prime minister suing publications which reported they had an affair.

As one of only three Labour leaders since the Second World War to win a general election, Harold Wilson is a towering figure in the party and a political hero of current leader Sir Keir Starmer.

He served as prime minister twice, from October 1964 to June 1970 and from March 1974 to April 1976, when he unexpectedly stood down, after realising his once formidable mental powers were in decline.

Born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, he came to power as the Sixties began to swing, promising to forge a new Britain in the "white heat of technology". In 1965, he shocked the establishment by having The Beatles awarded with MBEs.

But his time in power was marred by economic decline and industrial strife. Perhaps his most enduring legacy - and the thing he was most proud of - was the creation of the Open University in 1969.

He died in 1995 at the age of 79, while his wife of 55 years, Mary, died in 2018 aged 102.