Now, back in the days when I was breastfeeding, and Ivan had just been born and I was spending hours at a time in the rocker in Ivan's room, I was watching a copious amount of movies and miniseries and such. I watched John Adams (life-changing) , Rome (scandalous) , Mad Men (really good), and The History Channel Presents: Winston Churchill. Now, the Winston Churchill footage was amazing. It was all of his speeches, and the German propaganda songs (The Man with the Big Cigar), and interviews with his daughter-in-law and his grandson (Young Winston). I thoroughly enjoyed all of it, and now that I am reminiscing about it, may have to watch it again. It was inspirational, and I might have shed a few tears.
Anyway, the woman that was interviewed the most about Winston Churchill was Pamela Digby Churchill Hayard Harriman. "Who is that??" I continually asked myself. She was older, yet attractive and spoke about Winston Churchill as if she knew him best of all, better than his daughter (who was also interviewed and was rather dull). Pamela was vivacious and warm and quite pleasant. SO, I decided to look her up. She has a Wikipedia page, and it is completely enticing. For this reason, I needed to read a book about her. SHE WAS A MYSTERY TO ME, AND I HAD TO KNOW MORE. I found one book that is now out of print, but I ferreted it out of the used books on Amazon. It is called The Life of the Party: the Biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman. It is written by Christopher Ogden. Ogden has also written a book about Margaret Thatcher. He doesn't have a Wikipedia page or any page at all, and I would really like to know more about him.
The whole story behind the book is remarkable. He and Pamela entered into a legal agreement whereby Ogden would write her biography. As he began to dig up dirt, she balked at the agreement and they had a legal/financial squabble that ended in another agreement which was that he would write the book with no help from her. He interviewed 200 people that had known her when and learned much more than anyone wanted him to. Overall, everyone he talked to seemed to genuinely dislike her very much. Ogden himself seemed to hate her as well. Maybe the only biography that I have ever read where the author was absolutely hateful about his subject.
Anyway, to sum up. Pamela Digby was an English country aristocrat with no title and only a small annuity who moved to London and had a random date with Winston Churchill's son Randolph. Randolph was a well-known drunk and abuser and deeply in debt like the rest of the Churchills. He had proposed to several women before (all who said no), as he was desperate to procreate before going off to war (though Winston Sr. would never really let him go anywhere dangerous as he was the only son).
He proposed to Pamela and based on the importance of his father, she said yes. She married Randolph, became pregnant, and left Randolph and sent their son (Young Winston) off to be raised in the country until he was 5ish, at which time she passed him off to relatives, until he was old enough to go to boarding school where he stayed until he graduated. The neglect was the most disturbing aspect of the book.
Anyway, Pamela parlayed her new Churchill last name and the neglected son into meetings and relationships with famous and wealthy men. Among them were:
- Averell Harriman
- Edward R. Murrow (amazing broadcast journalist)
- Jock Whitney
- Aly Khan (later married Rita Hayworth)
- Baron Elie de Rothschild
- An Agnelli Heir (Fiat)
- Stavros Niarchos
- Leland Hayward (who became her second husband)
- Averell Harriman again (who became her third husband)
All of these men were married and Pamela was so desperate to be married and spending so wildly that she converted to Catholicism in a failed attempt to convince the Agnelle heir to marry her. She seemed to spend most of her life alone between relationships and hiding from wives, she developed cancer from an STD and a myriad of other tragic health issues related to what you would think.
She seemed to think that each man would divorce his wife for her but it never worked out until she met the recently widowed Leland Hayward when she was in her forties. To her surprise, Hayward was in an unfortunate way financially and when he died, she had nothing but a house, which could not maintain her lifestyle. In a strange turn of events, she stayed with Frank Sinatra (though not romantically) for a while after she was widowed and then contacted Averell Harriman after his wife died. This time, he married her within months. She was fifty-ish, and he was eighty-ish.
This marriage made her HUGELY wealthy. Averell left everything to Pamela, something close to a net of a billion dollars. This included several homes, a jet, an art collection that was just stunning. He pretty much left his children cold. It was an amazing coup, though she didn't really get her hands on any of it until Averell died when Pamela was 65 or 70.
For whatever reason, though she was a British citizen and typically a quite conservative one, in the vein of Winston Churchill, she became a HUGE supporter of the democratic party. She was influential in getting Bill Clinton elected, and he rewarded her with an ambassadorship to France. Which is where she lived, in the embassy, until she died after swimming laps at the Paris Ritz-Carlton.
To sum up, a fascinating but really terrible person. A quote from a "friend" is as follows: "She is totally self-centered and narcissistic." So, WOW. WOW. Nobody likes her, but she got what she wanted in the end. COMPLETELY. It was a quick read, some of the Democratic party minutia got a little dull in the end, but just really interesting and I felt I learned a lot about the culture of London during World War II.
On to a fiction book: The Elegance of the Hedgehog.
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