Stephen Bates

Paying for a peerage - an illegal practice - feels like a very modern form of corruption, one that both the Labour and Conservative parties have been accused of indulging in at times during the early twenty-first century. Except, of course, it was happening almost a century ago. Meet Maundy Gregory, actor, journalist, publishing proprietor, conman, embezzler, MI5 spy - and the man you went to see if you had the money to pay for a peerage in the post-First World War years.

Cutting a dash across high society of the 1920s - he was in attendance at the wedding of the future George VI - the immaculately oiled and overdressed Gregory would happily pocket thousands for playing Mr Fixit for wannabe knights and lords, and swell the coffers of Lloyd George's Liberal Party to millions of pounds. Business was brisk, and business was brazen. Visitors to his lavish office on Parliament Street, with a direct line to 'Number 10', would be wined and dined and, after paying up, leave satisfied that they would be next on the list for a knighthood or barony.

Nothing could be guaranteed, of course, and it was a strictly no refunds business. But Gregory was also suspected of being something else, to add to his impressive list of accomplishments: a murderer. As the political winds changed, the debts mounted up and the walls closed in around him, he somehow managed to inherit his mistress's not inconsiderable savings when she scribbled a new will on the back of a menu and was suddenly taken ill ...

In The Man Who Sold Honours, Stephen Bates lifts the lid on the truth about this long-forgotten character who remains the only person ever to be prosecuted under the sale of honours act of 1925. A powerful preview of the scandals to come in Britain in recent years, this is the story of the original honours tout - a riches-to-rags tale of greed, corruption and murder in the interwar years.