The second season of the programme will be set earlier in the same decade, and will tell the story of the high-profile divorce of the Duchess of Argyll, who died in 1993.

Speaking to Radio Times, executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins described the Duchess of Argyll as the “first woman to be publicly slut-shamed”.

Her second husband, Ian Campbell, the 11th Duke of Argyll, sued her for divorce. She was his third wife.

Among the evidence presented at the 11-day court case was a diary in which the Duchess named the men she had slept with, and a photograph of her naked save for three strings of pearls, engaged in a sex act with a man whose face could not be seen; the identity of the man has never been confirmed.

A Very English Scandal to return with story of first woman to be ‘slut-shamed’