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From Wondering, I'm Matt Ford and I'm Alice Levine and this is British Scandal.

So, Alice, we've just finished the utterly bizarre story of John Stonehouse, the MP who faked his own death to get away from financial and political troubles.

How did you feel about him by the end?

Oh, it's been a dramatic one, hasn't it? I've been on a rollercoaster, I don't know about you.

So, clearly he's an egotistical selfish cheater, he's a manipulator, but then his ambition and his idealism were definitely abused by those Czech handlers. So, there's a lot of texture in this one.

Yes, well today's guess you'll be able to shed some light on all of that. Julian Hayes is a lawyer and author who wrote John Stonehouse, Cabinet Minister of Fraud to Spy.

He's also John Stonehouse's grand nephew and his father was Stonehouse's nephew and lawyer. He joins us next.

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And then at the end of the show we asked them for a word that they'd be happy never to hear again.

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Julian, thank you so much for joining us on British scandal. Why have you decided to tell your grand uncle's story?

It's always been there. I lived through it as a kid. My family, I'm particularly my father was embroiled in the whole scandal court case and everything because of his involvement with my uncle.

And as time has progressed, it has been the case that questions arose. Why did my parents behave in a particular certain way? How did it affect the family?

Indeed, I read the various stories that came out about his involvement with checks, the business dealings, the disappearance and the curiosity I suppose of the whole scenario was so great that I felt it merited.

First of all, further investigation because I had a lot of unanswered questions. And then as I investigated, I thought, well, it actually needed telling properly because it's been rather like Chinese whispers.

A lot of it has been I think perverted if you like over the years and really the full story needs to be put out there.

Julian, what was your father's involvement with Stonehouse?

Well, my father's is nephew. They had a very close relationship. My father, rather looked up to his uncle, Naturally, because he viewed him as very successful. He was a politician during the sixties, obviously, he was a minister.

And he tried to emulate him in certain ways. We went to Africa, we are by all his memories in living in Africa. And when we returned, my father then began to train as a lawyer.

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