Harold Wilson confessed to a secret extramarital affair during his second term as prime minister, one of his closest aides has revealed.
There have long been rumours that the Labour politician, who was in power for two separate periods in the 1960s and 1970s, had a relationship with his political secretary Marcia Williams.
But according to The Times, there was a different “love match” in Downing Street during his marriage.
Lord Wilson’s long-serving press secretary Joe Haines told the newspaper that the PM had actually been in a relationship with deputy press secretary Janet Hewlett-Davies.
Now 96 years old, Mr Haines broke almost 50 years of silence to reveal that both parties had told him about their affair.
Mr Haines, who kept the secret for decades while writing about British politics, said he and another close adviser – Bernard Donoughue – wanted to ensure the historical record about Lord Wilson’s time in office was accurate.
He claims the affair “increased” the then prime minister’s morale “more than anyone could know” in the two years before he retired.
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Ms Hewlett-Davies was 22 years younger than Lord Wilson – and was a married woman in her 30s at the time of their tryst.
“She died nursing a secret which never leaked from Downing Street, the most notorious leaky building in Britain,” Mr Haines said.
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Explaining why it remained confidential for so long, Lord Donoughue told the BBC: “We kept it secret because we thought it would be used damagingly against him at that time.
“There’s no reason for that now, and we waited until they had both died – Wilson some time ago and Janet just a few months ago, and so I felt as a sometime historian this was important to go in the historical record of Harold Wilson.”
Mr Haines revealed that Ms Hewlett-Davies confessed to the affair after she was spotted climbing the staircase to the prime minister’s room in 1974.
Meanwhile, Lord Wilson – who died in 1995 aged 79 – had confided that his lover had given him “a new lease of life”.
Ms Hewlett-Davies passed away last year and was one of the first women to run communications for several Whitehall departments.
