THE mysterious life of one of Cornwall’s former MPs is being revealed by his son who hopes to uncover his secrets in a new book.

Between 1964 and 1970, Peter Bessell was the Liberal Party politician for Bodmin. Having previously stood for the seat in the 1959 election, Peter was defeated by Conservative MP Sir Douglas Marshall, however, five years later he won the seat with a majority of more than 3,000.

However, unlike many politicians, Peter isn’t remembered just for his policies. Instead, he is probably best known for his role in a political scandal which saw a British politician try to get his former lover murdered for fear he may end his political career.

Nearly 50 years on from the incident, and after a high-profile dramatisation of the case – A Very English Scandal – Paul Bessell, Peter’s son has taken it upon himself to discover who his father really was.

Following the release of his book ‘Finding Dad’, Paul spoke to us about his relationship with his father, some of the discoveries he made, and what he thinks the ‘true’ Peter Bessell looked like.

“My desire to learn more about my father has been there for years but life kind of took over,” Paul explained. “As you know dad was accused of many, many things, some of which were, shall we say, less than savoury.

“So, throughout my life there’s been the curiosity to find out what was true, but the final prod was the TV series, A Very English Scandal. When that came out, I was contacted by Tim Tate, who is an author himself and a documentary maker, because he was writing a book about a spy and my dad’s name kept coming up, so he decided to contact me.

“He wanted to know if I had any information, and I’ve got my dad’s archives, so I had a look through, and Tim said to me ‘you do realise that you father’s story is incredible?’ and I said yes, and he asked why I had never written a book. And that really inspired me to get going.”

Peter’s political career is shrouded in mystery. After losing his seat in the 1970 election, he left for the USA, where he turned to business. However, some believe that this may have been to facilitate secret work for foreign governments.

“I’ve spent my whole life wondering what the truth was and I’m at an age now where I needed to try and nail it down if I could,” continued Paul. “The process of going back and looking into my father’s history was painful believe it or not. He had a huge archive, and I’d never delved into it for the fear of what I might find, and so to finally go through it all was extremely emotional.

“There were times I knew I was going to find thing that I probably didn’t want to know and that you don’t want to know about your parents and that is exactly what happened. So, yes, it was very difficult to be honest.

“Because he was supposedly involved with secret work, with one government or another, actually getting to the final truth was an extremely difficult thing to do. One has to come to one’s own conclusion and I try and leave that to the reader in the book.

“I had to find out whether he did what we called ‘secret work’, which was supposedly for the US government, and there was a moment where I found some information, which is mentioned in the book, and that was a moment of revelation for me because if he had been lying about his secret work, and only using his excuse to go away and have affairs with various women, which he was rather prone to do, then that would have been pretty shattering for me to be honest.”

Though, despite these revelations, Paul believes that the Cornish MP was a good person.

When asked if his research had changed his relationship with his father, he said: “If he was here, yes it probably would have actually, but not for the worst. I think for the better because I think if you look on the surface at some of the things he did and the women he had, you could look upon him as a bad person. But when you actually really delve into it, he was complicated and fundamentally good.

“While he was alive, it was easy to be bitter about that, but I released, now having been through the book, that he had a real fundamental problem, which I think many of us have, that he could never say no to anyone.

“But we discuss this at dinner parties, someone will ask ‘if your loved one, a son, daughter, father or mother, dis something really awful, would you still love them?’

“And I’ve found in my case, that yes, you do.”

Being a father himself, Paul says that his experiences with Peter have affected his own parenting.

“I think my outlook as a dad was changed the day my dad disappeared to be honest. Because I always said to myself, having had that happen to me, I was never going to keep those kinds of secrets from my children. I was never going to desert them for any reason, because having had it happen to me, I couldn’t do it to them.”

Finally, having spent his youth in Cornwall, Paul hopes that his book will shine a light on his father’s actions and finally give some clarity to the community which he says, welcomed him with open arms.

“It’s hard to overstate the attachment we had to Cornwall, as a family.

“And although my dad was born in Somerset and I was born in Torquay, we moved to Cornwall when I was five because dad was going to fight for the South East Cornwall constituency. And the Cornish, who are usually reticent about accepting strangers, just took us in with open arm, and as far as I am concerned, that’s where my soul is.”

‘Finding Dad: A son’s 50 year search for the truth’ is available now.