More love-affair details to come

By CAHAL MILMO

LONDON - If the revelation of his affair with Edwina Currie was not enough to ruin former British Prime Minister John Major's weekend, then further revelations will surely ruin his week.

For Major, 61, and former MP Currie, 55, this must also have seemed very far from the heady days between 1984 and 1988 when their affair was being conducted in utmost secrecy and, apparently, not without considerable passion.

The Times newspaper, which resorted to similar cloak and dagger tactics to keep exclusive its serialisation of the diaries, is expected to reveal this week details of the lovers' three-hour trysts and Currie's approving judgment of Major's sexual prowess.

At the end of one session she is reported to have said: "That was some going."

The affair, one of the most unpredictable political couplings of the last century, had begun when she was a backbench MP and he was a junior Government whip.

Currie made the initial approach to her literary agent early this year.

She then tied up a deal with Little Brown, the publisher of her previous works of fiction, including A Parliamentary Affair, a now almost autobiographical account of the steamy affair between a junior MP and her more senior colleague destined for great things.

All but a select handful of Little Brown staff were kept in the dark about the book. Details of its contents were also not revealed to Currie's first husband, Ray, and her two daughters.

A declaratory newspaper interview with the Times was held early last month in strict secrecy at the luxury Manoir Aux Quat Saisons, owned by Raymond Blanc in Oxfordshire. The room was booked under Currie's new married name, Mrs Jones.

Neither the Times, which kept its exclusive out of its first editions to prevent competitors immediately following it up, nor Little Brown would comment on how much they had paid for the diaries.

But they are thought to have already earned Currie around £300,000 ($1 million), consisting of £200,000 paid by the publisher and £130,000 paid by News International.

Some details are disputed.

Currie's assertion that it was she who ended the relationship when it became clear that her lover was destined for high office was yesterday knocked down Major's sister. Pat Dessoy said that her brother had told her: "Edwina started the affair. I broke it off. I can't see what I ever saw in her."

The emergence of the diaries spelled bad news for the Conservative Party and its leader, Iain Duncan Smith, reviving scandals just before the annual conference in Bournemouth this month. Major was not expected to attend but one Conservative MP, who witnessed the disintegration which led to the 1997 election defeat, said the resurrection of indiscretions past would do the party no favours. "It's like the curse of the living dead. Just when you finally think you've chopped off the monsters' heads, ripped off their limbs and begun to look ahead, up pops the past again."

- INDEPENDENT