Said to be Margaret Thatcher's favourite minister, Cecil Parkinson led a complicated life away from government.
The Tory politician, who died in January 2016 at the age of 84, was embroiled in one of the most infamous sex scandals of the 1980s, with his explosive workplace affair resulting in a lovechild he tried to silence. Lancashire-born Cecil's eldest daughter also led a troubled life, which ended in a devastating suicide.
As new Channel 5 documentary A Very British Sex Scandal: The Love Child & the Secretary delves into the scandal that shook Downing Street, the Mirror takes a look at Cecil's two tragic daughters...
Rejected baby
In the early 1970s, Cecil entered into a 12-year affair with his personal secretary Sara Keays, one that Sara herself had believed would result 'in an eventual marriage'. Instead, their romance imploded in a sensational manner in 1983 after Sara discovered she was carrying Cecil's baby.
In her 1985 autobiography A Question of Judgement, Sara recalled the moment she told Cecil she was pregnant - only for her lover to insist she get an abortion. She remembered: "I was shattered by his reaction. I had not expected this… He said that I had better understand that he would never marry me and that if I had the baby, he would never have anything to do with me again and never wanted to see the child."
Cecil, who was then at the very height of a career he intended to keep, initially received the backing of his party - including the Iron Lady herself, who Cecil later claimed had been 'immensely sympathetic' to what he described as 'the Keays affair'. Reflecting on this time in his 1992 autobiography Right at the Centre, Cecil wrote: "I told her that I had a serious personal problem and that I was not sure I should be in her Cabinet at all. I explained what the problem was. [...]
The PM reportedly responded by warning Cecil that, if he were not included in the Cabinet then 'every investigative journalist in the land would be given the task of finding out why'. Just four months after he was appointed Trade and Industry Secretary, the scandalous pregnancy came to light in a sensational manner - managing to overshadow the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool.
Cecil was however ultimately forced to resign from his position in Thatcher's cabinet in October 1983, and retreated to the back benches. All the while, Sara had to contend with what she regarded as a smear campaign against her by Cecil and his Tory pals. In a Channel 4 documentary made some years later, Sara alleged: "Downing Street and Conservative Central Officer were conducting a very powerful and all-pervasive disinformation campaign to discredit me because the only way they felt they could shore up his career was by discrediting me."
Attempting to 'put the record straight', Sara gave a statement to The Times, claiming that Parkinson proposed on two occasions, changing his mind both times. Sara, who welcomed daughter Flora on New Year's Eve 1983, told the publication: "I told him that while I accepted the fact he was not going to marry me, I could not deny my baby his right to know the identity of his father. My baby was conceived in a long-standing, loving relationship which I had allowed to continue because I believed in an eventual marriage."
Baby Flora, who was born with learning difficulties and Asperger's syndrome, suffered epileptic fits and had to undergo surgery to remove a brain tumour at the age of four years old. While Sara cared for Flora as a single parent, Cecil managed to repair his marriage to wife Ann Mary Jarvis, in the same year that his lovechild underwent her life-saving operation, Thatcher brought back to the front benches.
Life was far from easy for Flora. Mainly educated at home due to her ill health, when she finally secured a place in secondary school, she experienced bullying, which her mother Sara says was due to her estranged father's reappointment. Sara said: "It was torture for her. She was bullied, just because somebody thought it was necessary for him to have his job back, basically."
Cecil who never denied Flora was his, wished the little girl 'peace, privacy and a happy life' in a public statement, and made financial contributions. However, he reportedly never met his daughter, who purportedly never received so much as a birthday card from him.
After ascending to the House of Lords in 1993, Cecil took harsh measures to deny his daughter, enforcing an injunction so strict that it even prohibited Flora from talking about her own life. Cecil insisted these measures were intended to protect his daughter - but Sara took a different view.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, Sara claimed that the injunction went as far as to prevent her from appearing in school photographs or partaking in school shows - essentially erasing her existence. Sara shared: "What the judge effectively did was to say: 'It's okay for everybody to know about all the lies that have been uttered about her mother and raking over the past and talk about her father, but nobody can know about Flora."
After the injunction was finally lifted on her 18th birthday, Flora was finally free to speak out, which she did in a 2002 Channel 4 doc. Opening up about her estranged father, Flora shared: "I would like to meet my Daddy... because I haven't been given the chance to see him yet. If he was part of our lives I'd be seeing him all the time, every day."
Expressing a heartbreaking wish for their reunion, she later added: "I would like to see him and talk to him. I would like to go to the cinema with him and have some fun."
Daughter's suicide
Shortly before Christmas 2017 and soon after her father's death, Cecil's daughter Mary Parkinson died by suicide just two days after being discharged from the Nightingale Hospital, a private psychiatric facility in London. Mary, who was 57 at the time of her death, left a heartbreaking suicide note which read: "Thank you for loving me so much I had a great life until six months ago."
As per The Telegraph, Mary's body was discovered by a neighbour at her £900,000 terraced home in Wandsworth, southwest London, on December 10, 2017. The eldest daughter of Cecil and his wife Ann, Mary had struggled with mental health issues, drug addiction, and eating disorders throughout her life.
Westminster Coroner's Court heard how Mary had previously attempted suicide on several occasions. In her teenage and university years, she'd struggled with anorexia and also became addicted to drugs. Her concerned parents tried desperately to help Mary, spending thousands on treatment clinics over the years. As a result of her lengthy plight, her mother Ann, was inspired to found the drug addiction charity, Action on Addiction.
At one point, Mary and Cecil were estranged, reconciling in 1990, by which point she'd become clean. As per The Scotsman, Mary once reflected that her difficulties had stemmed from the immense pressures she'd felt. Mary explained: "I was the eldest daughter and I was very bright. I wanted to be successful and I wanted to be the best in his eyes, as any daughter does."
She added: "There was a lot of pressure on me. I was portrayed in the press as being this wondrous person who was spending all her life saving other desperate drug addicts. I believed all that nonsense and I felt I had to be an angel."
Mary, who was said to be hit hard by her adored father's death, also once acknowledged her half-sister Flora in an interview, remarking, "I think Sara Keays has done a brilliant job. It's clearly been quite a struggle to get her daughter to this stage."
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You can catch A Very British Sex Scandal: The Love Child & the Secretary at 9am this evening (May 1) on Channel 4. Follow Mirror Celebs on Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads
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