LONDON, March 10 – John Profumo, whose high-flying political career ended in a Cold War scandal of sex and espionage that gave way to a lifetime of atonement, died at around midnight Thursday, according to a statement issued today by London’s Chelsea and Westminster hospital.

He was 91 and had suffered a stroke two days earlier.

For a land that has since become renowned for ministerial misbehavior, the 1963 imbroglio set a standard, and became known in newspaper headlines as the scandal of the century.