Wikipedia implies, without stating explicitly, that Aitken filed his libel suit in response to claims that he "arranged prostitutes for Arab businessmen."
Three hours before the World in Action programme was due to be broadcast, Aitken told a press conference (at the Conservative Party offices in Smith Square, London): "If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play, so be it. I am ready for the fight – the fight against falsehood and those who peddle it. My fight begins today."
The programme was broadcast as scheduled. Aitken carried through his threatened libel suit; when the case came to court, the defence proved that the bill for a stay at the Ritz Hotel, Paris, in September 1993, which according to Aitken had been paid by his wife, was in fact paid by aides of the Saudi royal family. He was charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice; in June 1999 he pleaded guilty on both counts and was sentenced to 18 months in prison for each, running concurrently. He served less than seven months.
Aitken was unable to cover the costs of his libel suits, and was declared bankrupt. He also became one of the few people to resign from the Privy Council. His trustees settled legal actions against Private Eye, which had described Aitken as a "serial liar"; but The Guardian was left regretting that Aitken's bankruptcy – which revealed that "most of his apparent assets [turned] out to be conveniently owned by other people" – excused him from his liability to pay its court costs, which had been a condition of his being allowed to drop the libel case.
Following his release from prison, Aitken became a student of Christian theology at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford – having attended a course in 1997, to which he attributed his newly–awakened interest in Christianity. In response to the inevitable scepticism with which this declaration was received, he said: "In a different era, I'd have been one of the cynics myself. If I'd had a parliamentary colleague who'd got into trouble, gone to jail and come out saying, 'I've found God', I'd have said, 'Oh, how very convenient for him.'"
In 2018, Aitken was ordained in the Church of England as a deacon, to serve as a non–stipendiary minister at St Matthew's Church, Westminster, and as a chaplain of Pentonville Prison. Exactly one year later he was ordained as an Anglican priest in St Mary's Church, Stoke Newington.
Jonathan Aitken was born in 1942. His father was Sir William Aitken – a nephew of Lord Beaverbrook, and a wartime RAF pilot who would serve as an MP (Conservative, naturally) from 1950 to 1964. His maternal grandfather was John Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby – a civil servant and diplomat who was a key figure in Anglo–Irish relations during the Second World War. In 2008, a Dutch historian claimed that Jonathan Aitken's biological father was Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands – a German nobleman, who'd married the future Queen Juliana in 1937. Juliana was Aitken's godmother.
© Haydn Thompson 2023