Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue

Award-winning journalist Purnell’s latest Churchill family biography (following Clementine. The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill) about English political activist and diplomat Pamela Harriman is triumphantly delivered by narrator Louise Brealey. While Harriman has often been overlooked or dismissed as little more than a courtesan, Purnell reveals her to have been a powerful political actor. Harriman married Winston Churchill’s son Randolph when she was 19; overwhelmed by his gambling, drinking, and adulterous affairs, she divorced him six years later. During WWII, she was instrumental in gathering intelligence during state events and dinners and through targeted romantic engagements. In 1959, she married Broadway producer Leland Hayward, who died in 1971. After she lost her third husband, emissary Averell Harriman, to cancer, her worldly experiences gave her the confidence to speak at the 1984 Democratic National Convention in favor of the Mondale-Ferraro ticket. Nearly a decade later, she helped broker an end to the conflict in Bosnia.