In November 1974, British MP and former cabinet minister John Stonehouse walked into the sea off a beach in Miami and disappeared, seemingly drowned. This is his extraordinary story.

November 1974: A British MP walks into the sea and disappears, seemingly drowned.

Later, John Stonehouse, the former Labour cabinet minister, was found alive - on the other side of the world - revealing an extraordinary story of political intrigue, Cold War spies and more, concluding with a sensational trial at the Old Bailey.

Was it the result of a nervous breakdown as he claimed or something far more sinister that led to his dramatic vanishing?

Stonehouse is the definitive biography of this remarkable story, written by Julian Hayes, the son of the disgraced MP's nephew, who is uniquely placed to tell the story of this charismatic but deeply flawed politician. During his forensic research, Hayes unearthed secret reports in the Prague archives written by Stonehouse's former spymasters and spoke with those who knew the MP.

The minister's nephew recounts an extraordinary life . . . The book is a vivid account of how, in the 1960s and 1970s, Stonehouse - once tipped as a future Labour prime minister - betrayed his country, made a mockery of domestic and international law, ripped off investors and friends, humiliated both Harold Wilson and Parliament and shattered his own family and then, when the jaws of his self-made trap began to close around him, organised and executed a fake-your-own-death escape of such breathtaking chutzpah, he later tried to explain it as the work of a second personality living within him.