Norman Scott, whose allegations led to the scandal that ended the British M.P. Jeremy Thorpe’s career, tells all—and then some—in a memoir.

The Arrangement

By Quentin Letts

An Accidental Icon: How I Dodged a Bullet, Spoke Truth to Power and Lived to Tell the Tale by Norman Scott

Ten years ago it was the Profumo case. Today’s hot retro scandal is the Jeremy Thorpe trial: sex, politics, Sunbeam Rapiers and a pin-striped establishment reacting badly to gossipy lovers. With most of the tragic farceurs safely dead, this can now be dished up without fear of libel.

John Preston did well from his history-novel hybrid A Very English Scandal, which became a BBC TV drama. Michael Bloch produced a more authoritative biography of the former leader of the Liberal Party. Now Norman Scott, the stablehand and male model who was Thorpe’s Adonis and whose Great Dane Rinka was killed on Exmoor by a bungling assassin, has produced his memoirs. Norman’s Gloria Gaynor moment has arrived. What took him so long?