S10 Ep14: The Man Who Sold Honours with Stephen Bates

Update: 2025-11-22

Description

Chris Carr sits down with author Stephen Bates to discuss The Man Who Sold Honours and the extraordinary life of Maundy Gregory—actor, fixer, conman and sometime MI5 asset at the heart of Britain’s original cash-for-honours scandal. They unpack how Gregory monetised access to power, became the only person ever prosecuted under the 1925 law aimed at stopping the sale of honours, and what his story reveals about the long, murky history of buying peerages. The conversation then jumps to today’s political funding battles—from parties’ dependence on wealthy donors to recent cash-for-honours rows and Boris Johnson’s approach to transparency—to ask what all this says about the health of British democracy.

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Secrets and Spies sits at the intersection of intelligence, covert action, real-world espionage, and broader geopolitics in a way that is digestible but serious. Hosted by filmmaker Chris Carr and writer Matt Fulton, each episode examines the very topics that real intelligence officers and analysts consider on a daily basis through the lens of global events and geopolitics, featuring expert insights from former spies, authors, and journalists.