NORMAN Scott returned to Exmoor on Sunday, 44 years to the day since the start of court proceedings against the British MP accused of trying to have him murdered on Porlock Hill.

The case was described as ‘one of the greatest political scandals of the 20th century’, ranking with the ‘Profumo affair’ and John Stonehouse’s faked suicide.

Mr Scott, aged 82, who now lives near Chagford, Devon, 30 miles from the location of the attempted murder, was one of the star attractions at the inaugural Dulverton Literary Festival.

There was a sell-out audience for his hour-long conversation with journalist, comic novelist, and Prestigious Magazine editor Jon McKnight, in which he discussed his memoir An Accidental Icon.

The book looks back on Mr Scott’s troubled life and in particular, his turbulent relationship in the early 1960s with Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe, who went on to become party leader and came close to being appointed Home Secretary by Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath.

Mr Thorpe, who was MP for North Devon for 20 years, was accused of plotting to kill his former lover Mr Scott and dispose of his body because he was concerned details of their relationship would be revealed.

The sensational story was broken in 1975 by the Free Press when it reported on the shooting dead of Mr Scott’s Great Dane dog Rinka on the moors above Porlock.

Former airline pilot Andrew Newton was alleged to have been hired for £5,000 to carry out the murder, but his gun jammed after he shot Rinka, and Mr Scott escaped.

Later, Mr Thorpe was charged with Liberal Party treasurer David Holmes and business friends George Deakin and John le Mesurier (no connection to the actor of the same name) of conspiracy to murder Mr Scott.

The four accused first appeared for committal proceedings in Minehead Magistrates Court on November 20, 1978.

The case was referred to the Old Bailey, where the following year a jury found them not guilty after a trial which was widely regarded as having been influenced by the ‘Establishment’, of which Mr Thorpe was considered to be a part.

However, Mr Thorpe, who had lost his North Devon seat at a General Election shortly before the trial, saw his career destroyed and he did not return to politics.

Today, Mr Scott is in a settled relationship of 25 years with an artist who lives near Crewkerne, in Somerset, and describes as ‘utterly shameful’ the fact that the man who tried to shoot him and the accomplice who supplied the gun were never prosecuted for it.

He says he has only ever returned once to the spot on Porlock Hill where he nearly lost his life.

The affair was recently dramatised in a BBC series A Very English Scandal, starring Hugh Grant as Jeremy Thorpe and Ben Wishaw as Norman Scott.