the times | Tuesday July 21 2020 2GM 9
News
The married former MP Charlie
Elphicke sobbed as he told a court that
he had been having an affair while fall-
ing for another woman he is accused of
sexually assaulting.
Mr Elphicke, 49, a father of two who
was MP for Dover until the December
election, told Southwark crown court
he eventually told his wife, Natalie, who
succeeded him as MP, about the affair
with a woman he met through politics.
He said that he did not tell her that he
had fallen for another woman, a parlia-
mentary worker who has accused him
of sexually assaulting her twice in 2016.
He is on trial accused of two sexual
assaults against this woman in 2016,
and of a sexual assault against another
woman in 2007. He denies the charges.
Yesterday, he told the jury that at the
time of the 2016 assaults, he was having
an affair with a third woman he met
through work. He said he had sex with
her three times while he was an MP.
He said that he was suspended from
the Conservative Party in 2017 after
press reports that he was accused of
sexual misconduct. Afterwards, he said,
“there were a lot of rumours, a lot of talk
in the constituency” about his alleged
affair, which his wife had heard about.
He had denied the rumours to his wife
but “didn’t think she believed me”.
Meanwhile, he said, in 2016 he met a
parliamentary worker. He “thought she
was an amazing person... and I lost my
head.” She alleged that he sexually
assaulted her twice, on one occasion
groping her breast, kissing her and put-
ting his arm around her as she went to
leave. She alleges he put his hand up her
leg towards her groin on another
occasion.
When police interviewed him in
March 2018, he told them he was having
a sexual relationship with the other
woman, but did not disclose his feelings
for the parliamentary worker he is
alleged to have assaulted. He said that
he also told his wife about the affair, but
close friendships with many of its major
figures. “John Richardson was a man of
ravenous appetites, prodigious curiosi-
ty and impeccable taste with a magpie-
like eye,” Hannah Rothschild, his friend
and former chairwoman of the
National Gallery, said.
She said of the collection, which had
been in Sir John’s Fifth Avenue loft in
New York: “Where else could you find a
Lucian Freud self-portrait hung along-
side a Picasso drawing in a room with a
feather boa resting on a cushion made
from an 18th-century scrap of material
found in a Paris flea market?”
The sales, which are due to begin in
September, include Freud’s only known
self-etched portrait and a series of
Picasso prints including a bullfighting
scene personally inscribed “pour mon
cher ami John Richardson”.Tears as ex-MP
on trial over
sexual assault
admits to affair
Fariha Karim not about his attraction to the parlia-
mentary worker.
He said: “I didn’t know how to ex-
plain it to Natalie. It was an emotional
attachment to someone else — I
thought she would be very hurt, and I
didn’t want that... I didn’t think my
marriage would survive this.”
Of admitting the affair, he said: “She
had already challenged me about it,
and already suspected it, and it wasn’t
that type of emotional attachment.”
He told the court he later disclosed
his feelings towards the parliamentary
worker to his wife, telling Mrs Elphicke:
“I did not have an affair [with the
woman accusing him of sexual assault]
but I did proposition [her] and I wanted
to have an affair. She was very hurt and
upset. It was very difficult.”
He admitted lying to the police, his
wife, and in a defence witness
statement he signed. “I had dug myself
into such a hole, I didn’t know how to
get out,” he said. “I was in a complete
mess and I didn’t know what to do.”
In relation to the count of sexually
assaulting a woman at his former home
in 2007, three years before he became
MP, he said that they had been drinking
wine in his garden before going inside
his house. They found chocolate stars
left by his six-year-old daughter and
they fed them to each other, he said. “It
became very flirty... more sexual, in a
silly, flirty kind of way.” He added: “I
came to the conclusion that we wanted
to kiss, because we were in this silly
mood and in a moment of extreme stu-
pidity I forgot who I was and I forgot
who she was.” He said: “I kissed her.
And she kissed me back. It was a split
second. Then she stopped me and
pulled back. I stopped immediately and
pulled back.” He denies groping her
breast or chasing her around singing
“I’m a naughty Tory” while smacking
her bottom, but said of the encounter: “I
take full responsibility because I should
not have let this happen. I think it’s the
biggest regret of my life.”
The trial continues.
H
e was 21 and
a junior
officer, she
was the
daughter of
Britain’s representative
in Hyderabad, southern
India (Valentine Low
writes).
It was love at first
sight, as Winston
Churchill would recall
when he wrote to his
mother after meeting
Pamela Plowden in
India in 1896. “I must
say she is the most
beautiful girl I have
ever seen,” he wrote
after meeting her at a
polo tournament in
Secunderabad.
Churchill told his
mother, who knew
Pamela’s family, that
she had visited
Bangalore, where he
was stationed with the
Fourth Hussars. “We
are going to try and do
Hyderabad together, on
an elephant. You dare
not walk or the natives
spit at Europeans,
which provokes
retaliation leading to
riots.”
Pamela later told
Eddie Marsh, his
secretary: “The first
time you meet Winston
you see all his faults,
and the rest of your life
you spend discovering
his virtues.” Although
she refused Churchill’s
marriage proposal,
they remained great
friends.
Now a letter
reveals that
they were still
close 60
years later.
Theletter, written in 1957, in
which he calls her “My
dear Pamela”, appears
to follow a dinner
together that had been
overshadowed by the
death of Frederick
Lindemann, Viscount
Cherwell, Churchill’s
scientific adviser during
the war. He wrote:
“Poor ‘Prof ’ was a great
sorrow to those who
knew him. We had a
jolly dinner together
notwithstanding. You
were wonderful as a
companion.”
The letter is being
sold by a private
collector with
International
Autograph Auctions, of
Malaga, Spain. It is
estimated to fetch
£1,500.
Pamela married
Victor Bulwer-Lytton,
2nd Earl of Lytton, in- She died in 1971.
Churchill’s
first love
revealed in
1957 letter
eo
onsneChurchill said Pamela
Plowden, left, was the
most beautiful girl
he had ever seenNATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERYshe refused Churchill’s
marriage proposal,
they remained great
friends.
Now a letter
revealsthat
they were still
closse 60
yearars s later.
TheestA businessman has tried to have his
75-year-old mother jailed in a family
feud over a caravan park empire worth
millions of pounds.
Michael Loveridge, 50, is embroiled
in a legal row with his parents over the
business in Bewdley, Worcestershire.
He told a judge that he had spent 20
years nurturing it, but his parents, Ivy
and Alldey, 78, are majority sharehold-
ers in the most valuable elements.
This year the son obtained court or-
ders granting him effective control of
the business partnership and five
family companies. He is now “applying
to commit his mother to prison”, his
lawyers said, for allegedly breaching or-
ders that banned his parents from “in-
terfering” in the caravan business.
Brian Averill, for the son, told the
Court of Appeal in a hearing yesterday
that the parents aimed to take back con-
trol and “are so far anti-Michael that
they would do anything to destroy him”.
The Loveridge family runs several
static caravan sites including Riverside
Caravan Park in Bewdley, near Kidder-
minster, where the parents live, the ap-
peal judges heard. The son is a director
of several of the companies, one of
which controls £5 million of assets while
another has almost £5 million in capital,
according to Companies House records.
As majority shareholders in most of theArt historian’s collection of
friends lights up Sotheby’s
David Sanderson Arts CorrespondentSir John Richardson found himself,
sometimes naked, at the heart of the art
world until his death last year.
The fruits of the art historian’s friend-
ships with Pablo Picasso, Lucian Freud
and Andy Warhol are now on public
view as Sotheby’s prepares to sell his
distinctive collection. It includes works
inscribed to him by Picasso, Freud and
Georges Braque as well as a Warhol
print of Mick Jagger.
Sir John, who died last year aged 95
only three years after posing nude for
Jenny Saville, is renowned for his unfin-
ished multiple-volume biography of
Picasso, whom he first met in the late
1940s. He continued to be at the centre
of the contemporary art world as a
dealer, curator and writer, formingFamily feud son wants mother jailed
companies, the parents had control of
the empire until earlier this year.
In April and May, Judge Patrick
McCahill, QC, sitting in the High Court
in Birmingham, granted orders that
handed control of the everyday run-
ning of the business partnership and
several of the companies to the son.
The orders prevented them from try-
ing to remove their son as a director or
from trying to reclaim money from him.
Lawyers for the son told the court that
before the orders were made his parents
had tried “to make him bankrupt”.
The parents are appealing against the
orders, claiming that they have been
unfairly “ousted” from “their life work”.
Their lawyer, Lance Ashworth, QC,
said there was no evidence that they
had been involved in any wrongdoing
since the orders were granted.
Lady Justice Carr ruled that the hear-
ing should be expedited. The case will
return for a full hearing later this year.Jonathan Ames Legal Editor
Michael Loveridge and his mother, Ivy,
are in dispute over the family business