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Perhaps it wasPACTV Your browser does not support the element.By Sonia Purnell. the red hair, alabaster skin and the figure-hugging couture, or her way of stroking an interlocutor’s forearm, just so, as he talked. Or maybe it was her name. As the daughter-in-law of , Pamela Churchill enjoyed the mystique that comes with being close to power. Flattered by her attention, powerful men became pliable.That turned out to be a useful weapon during the . The minds and hearts of Americans needed to be won if the country was to offer aid or join the fight. So while her oafish husband, Randolph, was posted far away, Pamela was deployed by Winston and Clementine Churchill to do a different kind of war work. She wined, dined and seduced in the name of Britain’s battle against tyranny.Sonia Purnell, a writer (who once contributed to ) describes Churchill’s unusual advocacy efforts in “Kingmaker”, an alluring new biography. Churchill set to work in 1941, aged 20. Her first task was to persuade Harry Hopkins, a grumpy, isolationist envoy, that Britain was worth fighting for. His qualms were no match for Churchill’s wiles: Hopkins soon convinced to help.Next she romanced Averell Harriman, the man charged with overseeing the Lend-Lease military-aid programme, which was distributing $42bn of food and army supplies (around $900bn today). His friends were bemused by his “unduly pro-British” turn. Then she courted Ed Murrow, a journalist whose nightly dispatches about the “Nazi menace” were listened to by millions of Americans. (He toyed with leaving his wife for the British beauty.)Churchill “developed an astonishing collection of bedfellows”, Ms Purnell writes, and “each one was a man with clout in the war effort.” She approached her sexual liaisons like diplomatic negotiation. She knew, for instance, how to identify a man’s ambitions and tailor her advance accordingly. She intuited when to withhold information and when to give it, but fostered an atmosphere where lovers felt they could speak freely. She would relay the intelligence she collected to the prime minister over late-night card games.As a result, Pamela’s “pillow talk was reaching the ears of leaders and influencing high-level policy on both sides of the Atlantic,” Ms Purnell writes, winkingly suggesting that the idea of the between America and Britain began “between the sheets of the Dorchester Hotel”. After reading this book, few will disagree with her assessment that Churchill should be regarded as “the most powerful courtesan in history”.These sexual capers, taking place as bombs rained down on London, are a romp to read. Churchill was only 25 when the war—and her disastrous marriage to Randolph—ended. She made the most of her war stories when gallivanting around New York or the Mediterranean. Subsequent lovers included Gianni Agnelli (heir to the Fiat fortune), Élie de Rothschild (a financier) and, it is implied, . (The Agnelli and Rothschild families own stakes in )Yet the aim of “Kingmaker” is to portray Churchill as more than a honeypot. The book is of two halves: one dedicated to her magnetism and the other about how she used it to become a canny political operator. After reuniting with and marrying Harriman in 1971, she set her sights on Washington. She hosted donors and rising stars of the Democratic Party for sumptuous events at home in Georgetown and raised six figures on average each night.At the same time, sensing that the Democrats needed new blood and ideas in the wake of Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, Churchill Harriman set up a political-action committee (ostensibly run by husband and wife, but soon christened “Pam”). She personally vetted candidates, assessed their prospects and ruled on which should receive financial support. Among her favourites were Joe Biden, Al Gore and John Kerry.Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of her benevolence was Bill Clinton, who had lost his seat as governor of Arkansas in 1980. He credited his ability to win the presidency a little over a decade later “in no small measure” to her support. He repaid her by making her ambassador to France, offering her another act as a go-between with him and during the Bosnian war. By then she had perfected the deft touch of a diplomat.
