Frank Costigliola, professor of history at the University of Connecticut and author of Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War, tells the : “Pamela was a tremendous asset to Churchill given the importance of information in wartime. To think otherwise is to be ignorant of the history, and smacks of misogyny.”
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Purnell doesn’t dispute Harriman’s sexual exploits, recalling in Kingmaker how she became known as “the greatest courtesan of her era”. Journalist Harrison Salisbury famously recalled that during World War Two in London, “sex hung in the air like a fog”. So Pamela was hardly unusual in falling into bed with a new partner, though she was probably an outlier in the frequency with which it happened. The (partial) list of her lovers included Edward R Murrow, the CBS broadcaster (“This is London”), Major General Fred Anderson, commander of the American bombing force, Colonel Jock Whitney, intelligence officer with the OSS, and Murrow’s CBS boss Bill Paley, who was on General Dwight D Eisenhower’s staff.
What information Pamela passed on to Churchill – or what he requested she tell the powerful Americans with whom she was intimate – remains unknown, but, Purnell writes: “Her pillow talk was reaching the ears of leaders and influencing high-level policy on both sides of the Atlantic.” In his review, Lewis brands this as “hyperbole”, although it is notable that when Randolph Churchill eventually learned of his wife’s adultery with Harriman, he berated his parents for their complicity.
American dream
Divorced after the war, Pamela decamped to Paris, and became part of a cosmopolitan set, having affairs with a roster of rich men, including Prince Aly Khan, Gianni Agnelli and Élie de Rothschild. These paramours financed her luxurious lifestyle, but none would put a ring on her finger. Approaching 40, she convinced Leland Hayward, a successful Broadway and Hollywood producer, to leave his glamorous wife Nancy – nicknamed “Slim” – for her.
