Libel: Filling in the Blanks

As part of a sensational expose on British racketeering, London's tabloid Sunday Mirror last month thundered on its front page that Scotland Yard was investigating a homosexual relationship between a peer of the realm and a notorious London gangster. The Sunday Mirror and its weekday sister, the Daily Mirror, which repeated the story, named no names, describing the peer only as "a household word." But upon returning from a vacation, Lord Boothby, 64, onetime parliamentary private secretary to Winston Churchill, looked into the Mirrors and in effect screamed: That's me they're talking about!

Lord Boothby, who is divorced from a cousin...

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