Scandal at Dolphin Square

'Compelling, authoritative and as readable as the best airport thriller. It fizzes with crime, fame, power and illicit sex.' Jeremy Vine

'A timely and important book. It's quite remarkable how one building has played host to such debauchery. If only the walls could talk…' Iain Dale

Designed as a city dwelling for the modern age, Dolphin Square opened in London's Pimlico in 1936. Boasting 1,250 hi-tech flats, a swimming pool, restaurant, gardens and shopping arcade, the complex quickly attracted a long list of the affluent and influential. But behind its veneer of respectability, the Square has become one of the country's most notorious addresses; a place where the private lives of those from the highest of high society and the lowest depths of the underworld have collided and played out over the best part of a century.

This is the story of the Square and its people, an ever-evolving cast of larger-than- life characters who have borne witness to, and played pivotal roles in, some of the most scandalous episodes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From Oswald Mosley and the Carry On gang to allegations of systematic sexual abuse, it is a saga replete with mysterious deaths, exploitation, espionage, illicit love affairs and glamour, shining a light on the changing nature of British politics and society in the modern age.



Simon Danczuk is the former MP for Rochdale and co-author of the bestselling Smile for the Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith (Biteback, 2014) and has written extensively for the national press. Daniel Smith is the author of the acclaimed The Peer and the Gangster (THP, 2020).



Compelling, authoritative and as readable as the best airport thriller. It fizzes with crime, fame, power and illicit sex.



A timely and important book. It's quite remarkable how one building has played host to such debauchery. If only the walls could talk …



Danczuk and Smith's entertaining history zips along, teeming with tales of espionage, crime, politics, scandals and lots of sex. The tenants of Dolphin Square include an extraordinary cast of well-known characters – royalty and party leaders; celebrity actors and star entertainers; the eccentric and the exotic. But the Square also has its darker side – as home to spies, secret lovers and paedophiles.