Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell (2024)

I have for a long time had an interest in Pamela Churchill, ever since I saw her being interviewed by Martin Gilbert for a TV documentary about her father-in-law in 1992. I had never heard of her and was taken aback by her beauty, charm and eloquence.

Of course by this time she had long been settled in America and was very much better known there than in the UK, although that would change when President Clinton appointed her as his first ambassador to France.

Sonia Purnell's biography is very thorough and well-sourced. It is also a rattling good read as Pamela's life, unlike those most people lead, was packed with interest and achievement from start to finish.

She played a role close to the centre of British and later US politics from a very young age, meeting and knowing an astonishing range of the most powerful and prominent people across six decades, from Adolf Hilter in the 1930s to Nelson Mandela in the 1990s.

Starting out as Randolph Churchill's young bride, she became intimate with Winston and Clementine Churchill just before he became Prime Minister in 1940. The marriage was a disaster, but it served as her entry point into the world of diplomacy and elite politics.

Numerous affairs with very wealthy men followed and two further marriages, first to the impresario Leland Heywood (producer of The Sound of Music) and then to the former diplomat and Governor of New York, Averell Harriman, who she had first met and loved during the Second World War when he was posted to London.

While married to him in the 1970s and 1980s she became very active in the US Democratic Party, raising funds and promoting the careers of a range of young politicians who would go on to achieve the highest offices including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Biden and John Kerry.

Born into a minor aristocratic family in 1920, as a girl, she was given only a very limited formal education. A career consummate with her natural abilities was thus denied to her, and so she had little choice if she was to gain influence but to do so through establishing close relationships with powerful men. And this of course is why she has always been a highly controversial figure, labelled a 'grande horizontale' and 'the last courtesan'.

Her allure was legendary and she was very happy at a time when such was not the done thing to sleep with great many men of influence.

It is undeniable that this strategy got her where she wanted to be, but this biography also demonstrates how her rather scandalous approach to fostering good international relations played a significant role for the UK during the Second World War in helping to engage the US political establishment.

Had she been a man, such behaviour would have been brushed off as being that of a 'womaniser', but we were then and are still much less tolerant of 'manisers' like Pamela.

This book very much sets out to put the case for the defence. Sonia Purnell seeks to counteract the more negative narratives of her life published by other authors over the years. In the process she is perhaps a touch indulgent towards her subject at times, particularly in her treatment of her many step-children and her indulgence of her own son.

But as a read this is just splendid. Authoritative, very well-written, thought provoking and endlessly interesting.