I want to know who she was.’ So the blowjob matters to me in one way. “It was,” says Phelps, “all about, ‘Who’s the man?’, ‘Who’s the headless man in the photos?’, ‘How many men did she f**k?’, ‘Who was she blowing?’ And I almost thought, ‘I actually don’t give a shit. Thanks to a censorious judge, the vile behaviour of the duke, a series of photographs showing the duchess performing fellatio on an unidentified man and her own altruistic, if high-handed, refusal to defend herself, the sexual ins and outs of this separation are a matter of incredibly detailed historical record. The screenwriter has made this duchess, Margaret of Argyll, the heroine of A Very British Scandal, a new BBC drama starring Claire Foy and Paul Bettany as the aristos whose divorce transfixed a nation in 1963.
“The first time I heard of her, she was referred to as the Blowjob Duchess.” “Here’s the thing,” says Sarah Phelps, talking about the duchess of Argyll.
