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All Of It with Alison Stewart
The Life of Socialite and Diplomat Pamela Harriman (Full Bio)
00:30:06
Biographer Sonia Purnell joins us to discuss her new book, Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue.
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Sonya Purnell
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Sonya Purnell
Let's go.
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Sonya Purnell
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Sonya Purnell
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Full Bio is our monthly book series where we spend a few days with the author of a deeply researched biography to get a fuller understanding of the subject. This month we are discussing Pamela Harriman's astonishing life of power, Seduction and Intrigue. By Sonya Purnell Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman was a diplomat, a French ambassador, a democratic power broker, a wife of three powerful men, the mistress of many more powerful men, and she played a pivotal role in World War II as the daughter in law of the Churchills. As Purnell writes, hers was a life born of a pandemic forged by world war, defined by haute couture, palaces and jewels, but also love, jealousy, fortitude, heartache, illness, daredevilry and betrayal. She received dozens of proposals of marriage and took hundreds of lovers, enjoyed countless thrills on super yachts and private jets. But what excited her most was power. Let's get into today's full bio with Pamela's origin story. Here is Sonya Purnell, the author of kingmaker.
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Interviewer
On March 20, 1920, Pamela Beryl Digby was born and you write that quote. Pamela's family had enjoyed 400 years of wealth and aristocratic entitlement, but now faced a pressing shortage of cash. Where did the family money in The Digby family come from. And then what happened to it?
- [03:13]
Sonya Purnell
Well, they were aristocrats. They had been given money many, many centuries back. They'd been aristocrats for 400 years. They owned a lot of proper, both in England and in Ireland. But, you know, after the first world war, a lot of aristocratic families like them lost a lot of money. They had to pay big land taxes to help pay for the war. And the Digby's also lost their property, or most of their property in Ireland as a result of the Irish civil war, as a result of independence. And so also bad investments and things. So although they still had a large house in Dorset in the countryside there, they had far fewer acres of land than they used to have, and cash really was in short supply. However, that didn't stop them having 36 servants when Pamela was growing up. But it did stop her having, you know, a glamorous top end wardrobe when she came out as a debutante in 1938.
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Interviewer
Her parents were Constance Bruce. And I'm gonna try to get you to pronounce his real name, Captain Kenelm.
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Sonya Purnell
Digby Kenelm, known as Kenny, usually. Yes.
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Interviewer
How do they manage to keep money flowing into the Digby household?
- [04:28]
Sonya Purnell
Well, they made what they considered to be cutbacks by not buying lots of lovely clothes, but also by selling the odd item of jewelry just to keep things going. And so they say they made economies in the way that they thought. I mean, it wouldn't sound like economies to us. I mean, just to give you an example, every year they had all the slipcovers on their chairs replaced and renewed. So, you know, we're talking, relatively speaking here, but they didn't want to spend money on was, you know, fine fashions going out on the town in London. They sold the London house. They. They used that money to keep themselves going down in Dorset. So it was a quiet country life. And that is what Pamela reacted against. And the other reason, incidentally, that they chose a quiet country life. Pamela was born at the end of the last pandemic, the Spanish flu pandemic. And just as we've seen in recent years, people thought, you know what I would really like a nice big. The open space after the pandemic. And so that was another reason that they retreated into the family seat, which was called Minturn.
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Interviewer
What was Pamela like as a child and what remained with her from her childhood?
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Sonya Purnell
She was precocious, she was fun, she was quite flirty even as a child. She wanted. She loved attention and she loved people. And particularly when those People came from outside Dorset, so London is great. Very exciting. Americans even more exciting. And she loved the way that they talked differently, dressed differently, had all sorts of different ideas. So while her parents sort of had a horror, really, of living leaving Minton, she yearned to go to foreign places, foreign parts, and have adventures. And it's interesting, you know, the. The family crest has an ostrich in it. And I think that, again, enticed her into thinking that more exciting things lay beyond the grounds around the house. And one last thing that also influenced her. She had a very, very stable family life, although there weren't many other young people around. She only really had her brother and two sisters. But what fascinated her was a portrait of an ancestor called Jane Digby, which was shut away on the back stairs and no one else saw it. And there was a faint aura of scandal around this painting. And this really, you know, pricked Pamela's curiosity. And she found out this was a very wicked ancestor who'd had lots and lots of lovers and was so naughty that her parents had burnt most of her intimate diaries that no one would ever be able to read them. So I think, you know, Pamela, stuck there in Dorset, hears about all these adventures of other people and she wants some of that action for herself.
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Interviewer
My guest is Sonja Purnell. We're talking about her book, Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction and Intrigue. It's our choice for full bio. Early on, it was Pamela's job to get married, and it was a bit of a family affair. They let the details of a family trip to the States be a little bit of an advertisement for her. It appeared in the paper. Why did they release to the Tattler the details of their trip?
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Sonya Purnell
Because she was about to become a debutante for the London season, which was really a marriage market, you know, and all these poor young women who were being leashed, unleashed onto the world, but they were sort of, you know, they were trying to attract a husband, and they would look as glamorous and exciting and beautiful as possible. And when I say it was a market, it really was. And so her parents were, in effect, advertising their young daughter who was about to come out in society to be introduced to the King and Queen. And then her job would be, within a period of about six or eight weeks of the London season, bag a husband and bag as. As powerful and rich and noble a husband as possible. But the competition was cutthroat and she didn't have those clothes to. To bag a duke as she had hoped she had. She could only spend, you know, a comparatively low eight pounds each on a dress was a lot of her contempor spending £20 or more. And they had sequins and all sorts of things. Whereas Pamela's dresses were relatively frumpy. So she absolutely hated coming out.
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Interviewer
You're right. She had about 12 weeks to hook a husband. She's about 18 at this point. What would happen during that period? What were girls expected to do, young women were expected to do?
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Sonya Purnell
They were expected to go to balls every single night, Monday to Thursday from 10 o' clock in the evening. So you went off to dinner, you'd stay until 4 o' clock when they would play the national anthem. And that time you were supposed to look as decorative and, you know, not interesting exactly. You want. You weren't supposed to know about current affairs that would put suitors off, perhaps, but decorative and actually quite submissive, really. And it. They were sort of wallflowers and they were expecting young men or hoping that young men would put their names down on their dance card. You may have seen some of this in Bridgeton. Yes, and. But, you know, Pamela, unfortunately not many young men were interested in her. She was thought to be slightly plump, to be slightly too forward, to be slightly too knowledgeable. And I'm afraid she was one of those poor young women who would be reduced to going to the powder room in tears because no one would be on the dance card. Or sometimes you would pretend you would make up names and put them on your dance card, because to have an empty dance card was social death.
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Interviewer
During this time, she becomes sort of frenemies initially, and then really friends with Kik Kennedy, the daughter of Joseph Kennedy. Why was Kik a friend to her, even if it took time?
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Sonya Purnell
It did take time. The first time that Kik met her, she described her to her brother Jack as a stupid, fat little butterball. So it wasn't a sort of a friendship at first sight by any means. A lot of people thought that about Pamela, but once they started talking to her, they realized that actually she was really, really switched on, inquisitive about the world, really, always absorbing interesting facts about what was going on. And remember what was happening in 1938? We were seeing, you know, Hitler basically, you know, rattling his saber angst, annexing Austria, obviously, with great sort of designs on the rest of Europe. War seemed imminent and that's what Pamela was interested in. Of course, you weren't supposed to talk about it at balls, you were supposed to ignore it. But she saw In Kick. And Kick saw in her ultimately that they were both interested in politics. They both had a more serious attitude to life. And over time, they became friends, very close friends, in fact.
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Interviewer
Joseph Kennedy becomes part of the story. It was long held that he was sexually inappropriate with Pamela. Was this story true, as far as you can see?
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Sonya Purnell
Look, as far as I can see, I think it was. I mean, certainly a lot of people at the time seemed to think it was, including confidants of hers. We know that he was a predator, and we know that Jack Kennedy used to joke about that. And it was said that Joe Kennedy had gone into her room one night when she was staying with the Kennedys, and that is exactly what Jack used to joke about. So we don't know for sure. It's not 100%, but we. I think we can know. At the very least, he did something inappropriate. Because after the war, Pamela often used to talk about how his eyes had a cold, icy look when he'd done something unconscionable. Well, you might ask yourself, well, how did she know?
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Interviewer
My guest is Sonia Purnell. The name of the book is Kingmaker Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction and Intrigue. Pamela is introduced to Randolph Churchill, the son of Winston Churchill, when she was 19. The word was he lacked his father's warmth and his mother's judgment. His reputation was not very good. Can you share some of Randolph's qualities that would have made someone possibly look the other way if he weren't a Churchill?
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Sonya Purnell
Well, Randolph drank too much. Drank way too much. When he drank, he could become extremely obnoxious and really quite rough and aggressive. He could be a terrible brute. And certainly his second wife, June, he was seen to be violent. Not sure whether he was violent exactly towards Pamela when they were married, but certainly he was rough and bully. Obviously, that was in the future. What she saw was, despite all the warnings about him, was an entree into London society, into a really famous political family and an exit from Dorset and the life that she found so boring out there in the countryside. So he had. The week that she met him, he had asked nine women to marry him already that week. He then asked Pamela, and she was the first to say yes. And that was a very fateful decision.
- [13:59]
Interviewer
He was a decade older, a gambler, as you said. He drank a bit. A terrible temper. You write that the wedding was her, quote, first freedom. What did you mean by that?
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Sonya Purnell
Well, that's how she saw it, because in those days, you know, young women were not allowed to go out unchaperoned. They were not allowed to express their views in public, really, or if they did, it was considered a bad thing. She wouldn't be able to meet people and go to parties and have a, a public life, if you like, without getting married. So she thought, poor thing, poor naive young thing, that marrying Randolph would be her first freedom. As you rightly point out, he had very different ideas. He wanted an adoring wife, sure, he wanted an intelligent wife as well, a well educated one, but he wasn't prepared for her to have any independence and certainly not independence of thought and, goodness me, never to outshine him in her knowledge or her grasp of great affairs.
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Interviewer
In geopolitics, Pamela was known for enjoying men's company and she was a really big flirt back then. She started to gain a little bit of a reputation. How much of the decision to marry was to get away from her reputation as quote, unquote, fast?
- [15:15]
Sonya Purnell
I think that's a very good question. I mean, she never, I think, you know, broke the rules of the day. I don't think she ever slept with anybody. I'm pretty certain that she didn't. But people thought that she may have done because she was very flirty. And again, that was beginning to be problematic for her. It could mean that no one would marry her. It could mean that her reputation was tainted. But let me just explain why she did this for a second. So going back to what she wanted, which was a political life, the only way to obtain a political life was through men. Women didn't have that. And the men that she was close to had exciting lives that she wanted to be part of. Some of those men were politicians and they would train her up in the sort of the low cunning of high politics. Who was in, who was out, why that was happening, what was going on with Hitler. And she soaked it all up. This was exciting. But because she was spending time with these older men, you know, tongues began to wag.
- [16:18]
Alison Stewart
We'll have more about Pamela Churchill and her role in international relations in World War II coming up right after a quick break. This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We continue our full bio conversation about Pamela Harriman's astonishing life of power, Seduction and Intrigue by Sonya Purnell. With a husband at war, Pamela settled in with her in laws who happened to be the Churchills. Here's Sonia Pinnell.
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Interviewer
Once Pam and Rudolph Churchill got married, her relationship with her in laws was very, very close. What were the Churchill's first impression of their young teenage wife, of their son.
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Sonya Purnell
The very first impression was, oh, give her strength for what is bound to come. I think they knew just how problematic their son was. But interestingly, quite quickly, and, you know, they got married after they'd known each other for three weeks. But quite quickly, the Churchills, Winston and Clementine Randolph's parents, realized that this was quite an exceptional young woman. She'd had very little life outside Dorset. She had been to Munich. She had actually, we think, met Hitler very, very briefly. She had seen the rise of the Nazis over there. So she had been exposed to some of the sort of brutal aspects of life. But even so, otherwise she'd had a protected life. But they could see that she was inquisitive, that she was confident in society. She always wanted to know more. But when she was told something, she would retain it and analyze and process it and be able to understand its context. They were quite astonished at her grasp Very, very quickly of all the issues that were, you know, important as we entered the Second World War, 1939, Hitler has invaded Poland, Britain and Germany at war, just before she got married. But here was a woman who really got it, despite the fact she hadn't been to high school. She had no qualifications, but she had this very, very good brain, combined with a very flirtatious but enticing personality that cheered them up, frankly.
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Interviewer
How would you describe her role to the Churchills at this period?
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Sonya Purnell
Well, initially she cheered them up, as I said, but then she went on to do something far bigger, far more strategic, and really quite astonishing. But we just have to look at the context very quickly first. So in 39, going into 1940, Britain expected to be invaded at any moment by the Nazis. France had fallen, most of Europe had already fallen. And Britain was pretty much fighting on its own without the money, the men, the military hardware to do so. Churchill, once he became prime minister in May 1940, realized very, very clearly the only way that Britain could survive would be to persuade America to help it. This is before Pearl Harbor. America was not part of the war. And there was a great sort of public resistance to getting involved. Sure, a lot of people had links with Britain, but a lot of people had links with Germany, Italy, who were fighting on the other side too. There was a reluctance to devote American dollars and blood to another European conflict. So how were they going to do this? How were they going to persuade Roosevelt that, you know, Britain was, a, you know, had a chance of survival and B, was worth saving? And they saw this young, extraordinary daughter in law of Theirs, who by now had provided a son and heir. Their son had gone to war. They knew that that marriage was already in ruins and couldn't possibly be saved. And, and so she was unleashed as their secret weapon. When Admiral Harriman came over, Roosevelt sent him over as a special envoy to manage the Lend Lease program, which was a program where some of this hardware and food and medicines and things that were urgently needed would be provided in return for assets. Something very similar to what's happening in Ukraine now that he had to be recruited to the British cause. Now how are they going to do that? Well, they studied him and they realized that, you know, he, despite his kind of very cool, quite frosty exterior, that he was quite insecure inside. So they unleashed Pamela to seduce him. So she laughed at his attempt at repartee. She wore an absolutely stunning gold lame dress, shoulderless dress. She looked him into the eye and she stroked his forearm in a way that people began to call her mating dance. Well, I think it's fair to say Avril Harriman simply could not resist. And by the time a huge raid happened that night and they saw Selfridges department store go up in flames, he invited her down to his suite in the lower floors of the Dorchester Hotel, which was thought to be safer than most because it's made of concrete and shall we say that, well, as he put it later, there's nothing like the Blitz to get things going. So her seduction worked. This wasn't just a seduction, although she was quite willing to do this, by the way. He was a handsome man. She thought of it, as did Churchill, as her patriotic duty. But now he was totally devoted to the British cause. And by the time he went back to Washington sometime later, people thought he must have been bewitched in London because suddenly he just couldn't telling Roosevelt enough that we need to save the Brits.
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Interviewer
It was an open secret, the relationship between Herriman and Pamela. Even Roosevelt knew about it. You note that the Churchills had a worldly approach to sex. What about the rest of the world?
- [22:09]
Sonya Purnell
Yes, both Churchills, their mothers have been unusually promiscuous. Well, there was a div guided opinion. I mean, after the initial throes of that affair, the excitement, they realized they were going to have to be quite discreet and careful where they were seen together. So it wasn't ever really in public, but it would be at the Churchill's country residence, for example. They would often be there at the same, the same weekend. The churches would help to make sure that that happened. But if Avril's signature was in the visitor's book. Then Pamela would quite often not sign it, just to, you know, keep up appearances. But there were times when Avril was invited to stately homes and Pamela would not be allowed to come along with him, even though he would have liked her to be there. So she had to be careful. And also, if you think this was war, a lot of people didn't have enough to eat. They had horrible drab, rationed clothing. There she was in couture with plenty to eat, thanks to the American Air Force, amongst others. People had no idea what she was doing was actually a very special mission, because it wasn't just Harriman. She went on to seduce American generals, reporters, media tycoons, you know, Ed Murrow, Fred Anson, head of Bomber Command, and things were all her targeted seduction successes, actually.
- [23:34]
Interviewer
Yeah. The journalist, Edward R Murrow, he proved to be another of her lovers and he had an impact on her politically. He was like a man of the people and he sort of felt that she was spoiled. How did Murrow impact her work and where do we see it?
- [23:47]
Sonya Purnell
Yeah, I mean, a really interesting impact on her because, you know, she had been brought up an aristocrat. She was a Churchill, very much a Tory, a Conservative. But now here was this man who had a very, very different worldview and actually said to her at one point, I think you're spoiled. I'm going to take you to pubs like normal people. She'd never been to pubs before, you know, young aristocrats that, especially ladies, did not do that. But he also talked to her about, you know, the evils of segregation in America, what he had tried to do to stop that and reduce that and overturn that, but also just saying that, you know, as someone of privilege, you have more of a duty than anyone to do something for those who do not come from your gilded backgrounds, it's interesting.
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Interviewer
They were sort of in the business of explaining one continents to the other, of explaining America to the English and English to Americans. How so?
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Sonya Purnell
Well, at that point, the special relationship didn't exist. There was a lot of sort of, you know, post colonial antipathy, a lot of different ways of looking at things, but there were also different attitudes to the war. Let me just give you an example. This is something that Pamela did her best to try and find a compromise over. So in the bombing campaigns leading up to D Day, the American view was that the bombing should take place by day, because then it could be more precision, be fewer civilian casualties on the ground. The Brits Thought it should happen at night because that was safer for air crews and few of them would lose their lives. You know, two perfectly legitimate arguments, but very much diametrically opposed. So what Churchill would do would be to ask Pamela to run some ideas or some lines of argument past the American generals in charge of the bombing, find out what they were thinking and then report back. And gradually a compromise was indeed found. So this was the sort of thing that she was extremely good at. She was this sort of interlocutor, if you like, between the, the British and the Americans. Often the Americans had no idea that this was going on. But it certainly helped shore up the Anglo American alliance which was clearly crucial for winning the war. So there was that sort of explanation, but also there was a wider thing where society, the two societies were quite different. You didn't have TV like you do now. You don't. You could never just jump on a plane and, you know, hop over to New, hop over to London. People didn't really understand each other and it was about sort of trying to find those different cultural differences and explain them too and just even little linguistic ones. It's interesting that after a while Pamela started telling the time in an American fashion saying quarter of 10, whereas a Brit would say quarter to 10. So she would sort of, you know, laugh about that and explain these different ways of saying things. So she really was this great kind of bridge between the two.
- [26:41]
Interviewer
My guest is Sonya Purnell. The name of the book is Kingmaker Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction and Intrigue. It's our choice for full bio. The Attic. Tell us about the attic. This is a place where she held salons and invited people who were invited to the attic.
- [26:56]
Alison Stewart
What was the purpose of the attic?
- [26:57]
Sonya Purnell
So the attic was a cozy little apartment right up in the eaves of a building on Grosvenor Square where a lot of the Americans were based in London. In fact, it became known as Little America or Eisenhower Platz. And it was. Coz it was elegant and beautiful furniture, a butler who served the food and all this kind of thing. But it was, it was definitely cozy. And so you had these men with the weight of the world on their shoulders who were waging a world war many thousands of miles away from their own families. Who would come to dinner there, generals again, war officials over from Washington, all sorts of journalists and things. And they would sit around her table. She would almost always be the only woman, by the way. And because they, they were relaxed and it was good food and it felt Cozy and comfortable. They would be very forthcoming in. In the way that they spoke. And she would glean more information about the way that the Americans were thinking. And then at the end of the dinner, she would often hop in a car, an armor car if necessary, if there was an air raid, and go and talk to Churchill about what she'd learned and what she now understood. So this was a very, very special, sensitive, controversial mission that she was accomplishing. But it certainly helped both the Brits to try and keep the Americans on side. But actually, gradually, more and more and more, she was peddling the American line to the British. She more and more saw that. She felt sympathy for the way that the Americans were thinking and would be putting that thinking, you know, advocating it, if you like, not just reporting it.
- [28:42]
Interviewer
At this point in the book, you've mentioned relationships with Jock Whitney, Avril Harriman, Ed Murrow, Bill Paley, the head of cbs. I have to wonder, how did Pamela Harriman not get pregnant?
- [28:54]
Sonya Purnell
Well, that's a very, very good question. I think we have to say that we don't know that she didn't. Now, obviously, abortion then was illegal in Britain. There were only very unsafe illegal abortions, unless you were very lucky and you could find an expensive clinic that would do it. On the quiet. I don't know whether she had an abortion at that time, but what I do know is that she would sometimes disappear for a short time for an unexplained illness. We can interpret too much into that, or we can think, well, maybe that's what was happening. But it does seem unlikely when she was conducting such a busy and varied sex life that she never got pregnant at all. But this is the sort of thing, unfortunately, history does not record as fact. We can only conjecture with the facts that we do have.
- [29:44]
Interviewer
You write in the book, Pamela's strategic sex life is now recognized by scholars of diplomacy and war as politically significant. She is considered a master of the game, one that muted the distinction between loyal to Washington and to London, creating a supreme and relatively integrated war machine. Would you consider her a bit of a spy?
- [30:06]
Sonya Purnell
Well, it's funny, isn't it? Because obviously the Americans and the Brits were allies, and so spying sounds like a hostile act. It was certainly never hostile. The whole idea was quite the reverse of that. It was. There was a sort of an element of espionage in it, I believe. But she saw it as her duty to try to help bring victory. That's what motivated her. And sure, what she did was controversial. She couldn't tell her American lovers what she was doing with their pillow talk. But it was never in any way meant to undermine or act against them. In fact, it's very, very clear that by the end of the war, she is a wholehearted pro American figure who loves not only America, but many, many Americans. So I hesitate to call her a spy for that reason. I think it is much more nuanced and complicated than that. And it was something that was necessary before the special relationship existed. And it may be, you know, you can argue, I think very clearly that it was a precursor to that and that now we have the five eyes, intelligence, sort of sharing, operational, that sort of thing that just didn't exist back then.
- [31:28]
Alison Stewart
Tomorrow in full bio live for Pamela after World War II.
- [31:37]
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- [32:04]
Sonya Purnell
Let's go.
- [32:06]
Ira Flato
This is Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, the science Friday team has been reporting high quality science and technology news, making science fun for curious people by covering everything from the outer reaches of space to the rapidly changing world of AI to the tiniest microbes in our bodies. Audiences trust our show because they know we're driven by a mission to inform and serve listeners first and foremost with important news they won't get anywhere else. And our sponsors benefit from that halo effect. For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.