But spy stories sell, and money can be made, so the truth becomes irrelevant.

In the past couple of years two books about John Stonehouse, in addition to my own, have been published and to a person unacquainted with the source material – files from the old StB Czech secret services in the Czech language – these accounts may look credible. But I have all the source material and can see what those authors have done, which is misrepresent the documents.

The Julian Hayes book, Stonehouse: Cabinet Minister, Fraudster, Spy, is so full of misrepresentations I had to send 13 letters of complaint to his publishers – and that was just mainly on the spy issue (I could have sent more!). Those letters can be found on this website so Hayes' shocking modus operandi can be examined. In response to my complaints, prior to the publication of the paperback, his publishers, Hachette, changed some of their text. But many egregious misrepresentations remain in the paperback and I had to write again, as shown here.

Philip Augar and Keely Winstone's book, Agent Twister, was published by Simon and Schuster and my original letter of complaint to them can be seen here. In support of their notion that my father was an agent for the StB, Augar and Winstone offer up five instances of 'proof' but they have misrepresented the source documentation. That is what my letter of complaint focuses on. The CEO of S&S wrote back saying that I am entitled to disagree with his authors' conclusions, and I replied, shown here, saying this is not a matter of 'conclusions' but of facts - and Augar and Winstone have misrepresented what the source documents actually say. 

The truth about the spy issue, and the whole John Stonehouse story, is in my book, John Stonehouse, My Father, the true story of the runaway MP. Every word I say is evidenced by references while Hayes provides no references or evidence. And while I make finding each StB document I reference easy by providing their 17-digit numbers, Augar and Winstone have decided the StB files 'are arbitrarily named' (page 363) and only provide a date. If researchers don’t want to trawl through the StB file looking for Augar and Winstone’s dates/sources, contact me and I’ll give you the StB number references so you can easily find the source documents.

My complaint to the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, regarding the 2022 Keely Winstone Channel 4 documentary The Spy Who Died Twice, is reproduced here. Ofcom said they couldn't uphold my complaint because I'm not the person concerned, John Stonehouse, and the viewer was not hurt. I think that if viewers and readers are being fed false or misleading information that is damaging to them. And they pay for it too, one way or another. I didn't bother complaining to Ofcom about the 2023 ITV documentary, The Real Stonehouse, because apparently they don't care if viewers are being misled.

The 2023 John Preston three-part ITV drama, Stonehouse, has been broadcast all over the world and countless people have now observed a scene which never happened of John Stonehouse being caught in a honey trap by StB comunist spies. How would any viewer know that this was pure invention on John Preston's part? At the start of each episode the disclaimer reads 'This drama is based on a true story. Some scenes and characters have been imagined for dramatic purposes' but the viewer will not be in a position to distinguish between what is true and what is imagined. And a great deal of Preston's story is invented. I tried to prevent ITV's drama including material that was untrue, see here, but got nowhere. Although it's drama - fiction - people will still think Stonehouse got caught in a honey trap and Preston's fantasy will live on.

The Stonehouse family can't legally contest how any of us are portrayed in drama. We're just media fodder and the producers don't need to worry that we feel emotionally abused. More annoying is the media that purports to be non fiction - fact - when it is so often a dangerous cocktail of lies, misrepresentation, strategic omission, and obfuscation. For the average person, finding the truth in all this is difficult. To correct this, I wrote my book. And to correct the more recent accounts, I made this website. It will be an ongoing project because writers and broadcasters continue to try and cash in on the dramatic and lucrative ‘spy’ narrative. To do that, they have to misrepresent the source documents – which is shameful.