Favorite Non-Fiction Historical Read of 2024: Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction and Intrigue By Sonia Purnell.
I read a lot of really good historical nonfiction books last year — Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson, Precipice by Robert Harris, Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik, to mention just a few. Kingmaker, though, was jaw dropping.
It’s the latest biography of Pamela Churchill Hayward Harriman (to use all her last names), a woman referred to in her young twenties as “Churchill’s secret weapon“ to get the U.S. to enter WWII. Also, at the age of 73, as “one of the best ambassadors that ever served the United States,” about her success as the US Ambassador to France in the 1990’s (her first ever paid job). And also — most famously — as ”the 20th Century’s greatest courtesan,” a reference to how she spent much of the fifty year span between her aforementioned twenties and seventies. During that period, she was the lover of many of the great men on the international stage during that era, most of whom paid her living expenses during (and sometimes after) her lengthy liaisons with them: Gianni Agnelli, Prince Aly Khan, Baron Elie Rothschild, Edward Murrow, Bill Paley, Jock Whitney. And then, of course she was married to Randolph Churchill (Winston’s son), Leland Hayward (the great theatrical agent and producer) and Averell Harriman (businessman and diplomat).
Pamela Harriman didn’t simply sleep with great men. She became their confidante and their advisor, engaged in strategic alliances with them, traded in information, made powerful introductions. Eventually, she parlayed her shrewdness in making “connections” into her own political power base. Madeleine Albright summed it up best when she said Harriman was “not a woman to let the century pass her by.” Harriman’s life is a hell of a remarkable story. A triumph of soft skills, guts, persistence and ambition, she dodged gossip, jealousy, disrespect and terrible financial and legal advice to create a life that put her in the center of much of the great action in her era.
While I found the first part of the book, centered on her astonishing role in World War II as Winston Churchill’s confidante, the most absorbing, the whole book was astonishing. A life like no other, and one of the most fascinating women of the century.
What was your favorite read of 2024? I’d love to know! Write to me at Dish@PrimeCrush.com (and it would be super helpful if you remembered to put “Favorite Read” in the subject line so I catch it). Thanks!
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