London: He was renowned as a politician of the utmost dignity and integrity.
But just three weeks after Michael Foot's death, a previously unthinkable side of the former Labour leader has emerged.
The Left-wing intellectual had affairs with two of his secretaries and an Indian journalist, a new biography claims.
Foot enjoyed a 20-year relationship with Elizabeth Thomas, a friend of his feminist film-maker wife Jill Craigie. A second secretary shared liaisons with him during Labour Party conferences. But the greatest threat to his marriage appears to have come from his adultery with the BBC's Leila Pasha. Craigie is said to have confronted her husband after discovering "pornographic letters" from the reporter.
Access given
Carl Rollyson discovered the affairs after being given access to papers and diaries while researching an earlier biography of Craigie. He told The Mail on Sunday: "When I asked if he had committed adultery, he just stared into space, lost in thought, and I stared at the floor. I timed the pause: four minutes. "Then he finally took a deep breath and blurted it out. He said there had been ‘two or three women' and he felt he had to be truthful about them."
Foot had a relationship with married Cambridge graduate Elizabeth Thomas, his secretary at socialist newspaper Tribune, from 1949 to 1971. He described her as a "fine woman" who his wife knew "quite well" and suspected was sleeping with her. But she never confronted him over her. Of his next mistress, who was also married, Foot told Rollyson: "We had a sexual relationship. She's now happily married." Foot's third mistress, Leila Pasha, was born and raised in Africa to Indian parents and moved to London to pursue her career. They met when she interviewed him in 1969.
Foot broke off the affair and always insisted that his wife was his great love, Rollyson says in his forthcoming book, A Private Life of Michael Foot.
