7th October 2021

███████████

Editorial Legal Director

Hachette UK Limited

Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ

Dear ███████

Re: Julian Hayes – ‘Stonehouse Cabinet Minister, Fraudster, Spy’

I write to you as the former wife of John Stonehouse, the subject of your book by Julian Hayes. There are in this book factual inaccuracies and false statements about what I supposedly felt and thought at various times. Julian Hayes has innumerable instances in his book whereby he has used my person to project a fiction about my character, relationships and events. I am objecting both to this, and to the factual inaccuracies, some of which I will outline first.

Page 102-3: Julian has no idea of how our family ran financially or of my involvement in it. He has instead invented a narrative, e.g.: “… and Barbara fully engaged with managing the household. She was not in a position to find employment easily, having devoted years of her life to the care of her husband and children.” The truth of the matter is that I am highly skilled and those skills have always been in demand and, contrary to what Julian has written, I have always been in a position to find employment easily. I was recruited into my first job directly from school and, apart from a small ex-serviceman’s grant which paid for university expenses, provided the only family income while my husband was studying at LSE and volunteering for two years in Africa. When my children were small, childcare was provided by the local council for a nominal daily fee and I worked either full time, or part time with agencies. When we moved to Islington I employed au pairs so I could go out to work. Julian’s statement here completely misrepresents my role as a bread-winner and, indeed, I was working long before, and beyond, the day John disappeared - as Chairman of my public relations company Actionmedia Ltd which served UK architectural and design oriented industries until 1988. Julian’s ignorance on the matter of my employment should not be allowed to find its way onto the pages of a book that purports to be non-fiction and the text needs to be amended because I object to being portrayed as a dependent, needy female. 

Page 116: I took out the insurance policies following John’s car being obliterated by an IRA bomb on 19 May 1974 and another bomb at the House of Commons on 17 June 1974 and the policy documents were kept at our house at 21 Sancroft Street. Hayes’ statement that “While examining his uncle’s papers he discovered the life insurance policies and, as any solicitor acting in the administration of an estate should, he wrote to the insurance companies …” If Julian says that he got this information from his father I would refer you to the Acknowledgements (p363) in which Julian states “my father, Michael Hayes, with whom I have had a difficult relationship …” and can tell you that rift between father and son is very deep and has been going on a very long time and Julian did not consult his father about the contents of this book. Julian has perhaps made an assumption about the location of the insurance policies, one of many assumptions he has made on all kinds of subjects. I am objecting to the wording here because it leads the reader into thinking John took out the insurance policies and had control of them when, in fact, I did.

Page 168: “… Rupert Murdoch and Lord Beaverbrook, having engaged in a bidding war to buy Barbara’s story. Beaverbrook’s Express had won against Murdoch’s Sun and News of the World, at a cost of 80-100,000 Australian dollars plus expenses, part of which had paid for Barbara’s flight to Australia on Christmas Day” To my knowledge there was no bidding war, and no contract. I was given £4,000 (about A$7,055) and a return ticket to Australia for giving the Daily Express my first interview after meeting John in Australia as well as the first photograph of us taken together. That was the full extent of my obligation to the Express. Julian needs to explain to you and to me where he got the figure A$ 80-100,000 from, and amend it in his book to reflect the truth of the matter outlined above. 

Page 174: “… an astute observation given the recent contract she had signed with the Beaverbrook newspaper group.” Julian has no substantiating documentation for this statement, which is false. Julian states that “The minutes held in the National Archives in Kew have been redacted on this topic; an unknown sentence has been removed on the basis that it is so sensitive.” I now require Julian to provide me with that TNA file and document number so his wording on this matter can be verified.

Additionally, presumably Julian has a source for saying, prior to the above quote, Etheridge said the occasion of my reunion with John was not ‘particularly friendly’. The fact of the matter is that I could see my husband had had a nervous breakdown and treated him lovingly and with care and understanding. I have been wholly misrepresented here and I strongly object to this false narrative. Julian needs to provide me with the source for this statement.

Page 211-212: “… over the Easter weekend, Stonehouse had taken the two women in his life for a picnic at a lakeside beauty spot near the Maroondah Dam.” Everything about this sentence and its context is factually inaccurate including the notion that it was a picnic. Events at the Dam occurred at night. It misrepresents not only events and time, but relationships too. The idea of John taking Sheila and I for a picnic completely misrepresents the relationship dynamic - in particular my character in agreeing to such an invented “picnic” - and it needs correcting. 

There are many factual inaccuracies involving me throughout Julian’s book but here I will point out just three:

Page 157: I was not “picked up at the airport by consular officials”

Page 252: “His counsel also recalled fondly how most days they would be joined for lunch by Barbara, who would bring their meal in a small hamper, complete with cutlery.” I did not join John and Geoffrey Robertson for lunch and this is not what Robertson “recalled”: “At lunchtime we would retire to our room to feast on the contents of a picnic basket provided each day by the much-forgiving Barbara”- Geoffrey Robertson, The Justice Game, London: Chatto and Windus, 1998. Julian has made an assumption and gratuitously embroidered what Robertson wrote and in so doing places me where I was not. Julian might have the impression that such details are not of much importance and if that is so perhaps you could inform him about the nature of non-fiction books.

Page 135: The meeting with Sheila was not in “south London”

There are numerous examples of where Julian has taken the liberty of assuming what I was feeling, and what I was thinking. He certainly has not got this information from me because he and I have never spoken about ‘the Stonehouse affair’ and he did not have the good manners to consult me during the writing of his book although routes of communication were available to him through at least four intermediaries, not to mention that my address is not publicly hidden and is easily found.

Page 135, paragraphs 2 and 3: Julian makes it look as if the offensive statements that I was “Filled with the mad adrenaline of the betrayed” and I was “incandescent with rage” come from an interview I gave to the News of the World. The opening sentence of paragraph 2 reads “In an interview with the News of the World in the immediate aftermath of Stonehouse’s trial …” I attach a photocopy of the top front page of that newspaper to illustrate to you that I have that article and indeed, all others. In paragraph 3 line 7, Julian writes “She confided in the article …” By thus ‘topping and tailing’ these two paragraphs with references to the News of the World article, Julian has made it seem that I myself said I was ‘filled with the mad adrenaline of the betrayed’ and ‘incandescent with rage’ when that was not the case nor is there any approximation in the article to such statements. I object to being characterized in this hysterical manner, and can send you the full article if you wish.

I now need to know the source of the following statements about me so I can verify their source and accuracy, if indeed there is a source and these statements are nothing more than a misrepresentation of me for the purpose of painting a narrative. I object to being treated as a tube of paint for Julian to squeeze and create a false picture with:

Page 155: “her thoughts in turmoil, plagued with conflicting emotions of relief, fury and pain” 

Page 167: “undoubtedly there would have been a creeping resentment at his callous treatment of her” (has he assumed “undoubtedly”?)

Page 211: “While the couple remained married, Barbara, in her mind, had moved on.”

Page 211: “Barbara had put up with enough”

Page 237-8: Re “clambering over the gate … shouting ‘Barbara, Barbara, let me in": this is an invention of either Julian or his source – what is that source?

Julian’s book is full of inaccurate statements, and not only to do with me. I can only laugh at what he says, for example, on page 19: “Wining and dining prominent figures, sponsoring events and hosting functions were a vital but expensive aspect of his career. His problem was that he ‘looked like a Lord’, with the use of a chauffeur-driven Daimler, a perk of his position in the Co-operative Society.” My husband only had use of the chauffeur driven car when taken to specific formal events, as President representing the London Co-operative Society. The wining and dining, sponsoring and hosting are a figment of someone’s imagination, designed to build the picture of a man requiring extra funds. Nowhere does Julian say that if my husband was short of funds he could take on another paid speaking engagement – something he was routinely asked to do, and had a valuable collection of stamps he had traded since the age of fourteen which he could easily sell at any time.

Some of Julian’s comments rather have the tone of a psychologically challenged boy who, in his eight-year old mind invents things. For example, on page 107 he writes “He then galvanized us to help him clear the basement of cardboard boxes, wood and other items to build the pyre.” Faulkners Down House has no basement and I can send you the property details showing that to be the case. Julian continues: “I distinctly remember him in his yellow pullover and cravat, the epitome of the country squire, directing us to shadowy corners of the cellar to plunder fuel for the blaze. I have since also wondered what secrets we unwittingly helped him to dispose of.” My husband never owned or wore a cravat, whether “distinctly” remembered by Julian or not and certainly had no pretentions of being a “country squire”. And as there was no “cellar to plunder” there were no “secrets” to “dispose of". Julian’s memories are more akin to childhood fantasies.

I think I should tell you that I am in contact with Julian’s parents, who I see on a fairly regular basis. His parents were at my house a few months ago, Michael Hayes’ precarious health and Covid 19 notwithstanding. It is not sufficient for Julian to claim to you that he got particular information from his parents because I can and will check that, and given Julian’s historic and present paucity of communication with his parents (his mother only), not to say rift, it would be unwise at this stage for Julian to assert his parent’s involvement in his book project when I know otherwise. 

Please answer all the specific questions raised in this letter. It could be that Julian just has faulty sources but I will still need to know what those sources are. And, of course, it doesn’t help that his so called ‘non-fiction’ book has not a single reference. If it did I might not have so many questions for you.

Incidentally, but rather importantly from a publisher’s point of view I would think, my husband was never a cabinet minister. He was a minister and privy councilor, but not a cabinet minister. To verify this please refer to Wikipedia ‘Labour government, 1964-1970’, List of Ministers, where members of the Cabinet are shown in bold. The name John Stonehouse is nowhere in bold. Julian might think that as the position Postmaster General has sometimes been described as a ‘Cabinet level’ position, that entitles him to place my ex-husband in the Cabinet Office with access to cabinet papers. This shows either profound ignorance of facts and procedure or hyperbole manufactured for impact. 

With thanks for your attention,

Yours sincerely,

Barbara Flexney-Briscoe