Bessell X
Paul Bessell

Bessel X is the extraordinary story of Paul Bessell’s uncomfortable discovery of the truth about Peter Bessell, his father, set against a background of astonishing business and political corruption in the 1960s and ‘70s. As a one-time Member of Parliament and jet-setting financier, and variously described as a rogue and a charlatan, Peter Bessell gained international notoriety as the chief prosecution witness in the UK’s ‘trial of the century’, the Jeremy Thorpe trial. But his X rated life was far more than the Thorpe affair.

Drawing on research from previously unseen, extensive archives left by his parents, Paul takes us on a compelling quest to reconcile all the upsetting things he had been told, and read, about his father against his own memories of the gentle, generous and kind man he loved. He discovers his father lived three separate lives, two in secret, and was addicted to Mandrax and sex. His world was one of disguise and intrigue, raising questions of involvement in the secret services, and packed with contradictions far stranger than fiction. Bessell took enormous risks, always living on the edge of personal and financial disaster, to the point where suicide or disappearing to South America to avoid arrest beckoned. In desperation he chose the latter, only to later surface and find himself embroiled in the Jeremy Thorpe trial. Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party, had conspired to murder his erstwhile gay lover, Norman Scott, and when the police homed in on him, he attempted to pin the blame on Bessell - his best friend. The result was Bessell turned on him. He agreed to testify against Thorpe at The Old Bailey and, in so doing, incurred the wrath of the establishment. To get to the truth of this and the rest of his father’s extraordinary life, Paul reveals new information, including:

• Memoranda left by Bessell outlining how he had persuaded the US Government to drop federal tax charges against a close relative, a favour in return for which he claimed he found himself trapped as a secret advisor to the United States government.
• Documents outlining the final truth of his involvement in the Jeremy Thorpe affair, how the conspiracy to murder came about and how he and Thorpe attempted to defraud Jack Hayward, a wealthy Liberal benefactor, of half a million dollars.
• Desperate love letters from Paul’s betrayed mother, Pauline, to Bessell.

Paul, and the readers, decide whether his father’s claims of ‘secret work’ were no more than a convenient ruse to hide his philandering, or those of a desperate man who found himself trapped in a world of Mandrax and an unscrupulous establishment. Ultimately, the tragedy was Paul’s mother who died a heart-breaking death not knowing if the playboy, to whom she devoted her life, reciprocated her love.