 [The Free Press] For some reason, everyone I know on both sides of the Atlantic seems to be devouring Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell, the biography of the famed political horizontale Pamela Harriman. Perhaps it’s because, with Trump cosplaying master and commander, we all want to be bunkered in those storied war rooms beneath the streets of Westminster, wreathed in her father-in-law Winston Churchill’s cigar smoke.
Born in 1920, Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman was the luscious, wellborn redhead who, at the age of 19, and just two weeks after meeting him, married Winston’s appalling only son, Randolph, an abusive and misogynistic drunk, and soon gave birth to Winston Jr.
While the great man was consumed with winning World War II, Randolph was the Hunter Biden figure of Downing Street, whom the whole family—his three sisters and his ethereal mother, Clementine—tried to keep out of Winston’s way to avoid the inevitable scenes of rage and retribution. The marriage to Randolph collapsed after two years, leaving Pamela with nothing but her husband’s gambling debts, which forced her to flog off her jewelry and wedding presents.
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