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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 Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia 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 superyachts 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 Sonia Purnell, the author of Kingmaker.

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Alison Stewart: On March 20th, 1920, Pamela Beryl Digby was born. 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?

Sonia 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 property, both in England and in Ireland. 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. The Digbys 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 also bad investments and things.

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. 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 a glamorous, top-end wardrobe when she came out as a debutante in 1938.

Alison Stewart: Her parents were Constance Bruce, and I'm going to try to get you to pronounce his real name, Captain Kenelm Digby?

Sonia Purnell: Kenelm, known as Kenny usually, yes.

Alison Stewart: How did they manage to keep money flowing into the Digby household?

Sonia 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. They say they made economies in the way that they thought. It wouldn't sound like economies to us. Just to give you an example. Every year, they had all the slipcovers on their chairs replaced and renewed. We're talking relatively speaking here, but what they didn't want to spend money on was fine fashions going out on the town in London.

They sold the London house. They used that money to keep themselves going down in Dorset. It was a quiet country life. That is what Pamela reacted against. 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. Just as we've seen in recent years, people thought, "You know what? I would really like to nice, big, healthy, open space after the pandemic." That was another reason that they retreated into the family seat, which was called Minterne.

Alison Stewart: What was Pamela like as a child and what remained with her from her childhood?

Sonia Purnell: She was precocious. She was fun. She was quite flirty even as a child. She loved attention and she loved people and particularly when those people came from outside Dorset. London is great, very exciting. Americans, even more exciting. She loved the way that they talked differently, dressed differently, had all sorts of different ideas. While her parents had a horror really of leaving Minterne, she yearned to go to foreign places, foreign parts, and have adventures.

It's interesting. The family crest has an ostrich in it. I think that, again, enticed her into thinking that more exciting things lay beyond the grounds around the house. 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. 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.

There was a faint aura of scandal around this painting. This really pricked Pamela's curiosity. 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. I think Pamela stuck there, endorsed it, hears about all these adventures of other people. She wants some of that action for herself.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Sonia Purnell. We're talking about her book Kingmaker: 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. [chuckles] It appeared in the paper. Why did they release to the Tatler, the details of their trip?

Sonia Purnell: Because she was about to become a debutante for the London season, which was really a marriage market, and all these poor young women who were being leashed, unleashed onto the world. They were trying to attract a husband and they would look as glamorous and exciting and beautiful as possible. When I say it was a market, it really was. 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.

Then her job would be, within a period of about six to eight weeks of the London season, bag a husband and bag as powerful and rich and noble a husband as possible. The competition was cutthroat. She didn't have those clothes to bag a Jew because she had hoped she could only spend a comparatively low £8 each on a dress, whereas a lot of her contemporaries were spending £20 or more. They had sequins and all sorts of things, whereas Pamela's dresses were relatively frumpy. She absolutely hated coming out.

Alison Stewart: 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 young women expected to do?

Sonia Purnell: They were expected to go to balls every single night, Monday to Thursday, from ten o'clock in the evening. You went after dinner. You would stay until four o'clock when they would play the national anthem. In that time, you were supposed to look as decorative and not interesting exactly. You weren't supposed to know about current affairs. That would put suitors off perhaps, but decorative and actually quite submissive really. They were 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 Bridgerton.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Sonia Purnell: 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. 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.

Alison Stewart: During this time, she becomes frenemies initially, and then really friends with Kick Kennedy, the daughter of Joseph Kennedy. Why was Kick a friend to her even if it took time?

Sonia Purnell: It did take time. The first time that Kick met her, she described her to her brother, Jack, as a stupid, fat, little butterball. [chuckles] It wasn't a friendship at first sight by any means. A lot of people thought that about Pamela. 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.

I remember what was happening in 1938. We were seeing Hitler basically rattling his saber, annexing Austria obviously with great designs on the rest of Europe. War seemed imminent. 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. 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. Over time, they became friends. Very close friends, in fact.

Alison Stewart: 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?

Sonia Purnell: Look, as far as I can see, I think it was. 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. It was said that Joe Kennedy had gone into her room one night when she was staying with the Kennedys. That is exactly what Jack used to joke about. We don't know for sure. It's not 100%. 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 or you might ask yourself, "Well, how did she know?"

Alison Stewart: 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?

Sonia 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. Certainly, his second wife, June, he was seen to be violent to her. Not sure whether he was violent exactly towards Pamela when they were married. Certainly, he was rough and bully.

Obviously, that was in the future. What she saw, despite all the warnings about him, was an entrée 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. 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. That was a very fateful decision.

Alison Stewart: He was a decade older, a gambler. As you said, he drank a bit, a terrible temper. You write that the wedding was her "first freedom." What did you mean by that?

Sonia Purnell: Well, that's how she saw it. Because in those days, young women were not allowed to go out unchaperoned. They were not allowed to express their views in public really. If they did, it was considered a bad thing. She wouldn't be able to meet people and go to parties and have a public life, if you like, without getting married.

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 in geopolitics.

Alison Stewart: 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 "fast"?

Sonia Purnell: I think that's a very good question. She never, I think, broke the rules of the day. I don't think she ever slept with anybody. I'm pretty certain that she didn't. People thought that she may have done because she was very flirty. 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. Let me just explain why she did this for a second.

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. The men that she was close to had exciting lives that she wanted to be part of. Some of those men were politicians. They would train her up in the low cunning of high politics like who was in, who was out, why that was happening, what was going on with Hitler. She soaked it all up. This was exciting. Because she was spending time with these older men, tongues began to wag.

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.

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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We continue our Full Bio conversation about Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell. With a husband at war, Pamela settled in with her in-laws, who happened to be the Churchills. Here's Sonia Purnell.

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Alison Stewart: 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?

Sonia 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. Interestingly, quite quickly, they got married after they'd known each other for three weeks. 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. She had been exposed to some of the brutal aspects of life. Otherwise, she'd had a protected life. They could see that she was inquisitive, that she was confident in society. She always wanted to know more. 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 important as we entered Second World War. 1939, Hitler has invaded Poland. Britain and Germany at war just before she got married. 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.

Alison Stewart: How would you describe her role to the Churchills at this period?

Sonia 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. We just have to look at the context very quickly first. 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. 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 was before Pearl Harbor. America was not part of the war. There was a great public resistance to getting involved. Sure, a lot of people had links with Britain, but a lot of people had links with Germany and Italy who were fighting on the other side too.

There was a reluctance to devote American dollars and blood to another European conflict. How were they going to do this? How were they going to persuade Roosevelt that Britain, A, had a chance of survival and, B, was worth saving? 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.

She was unleashed as their secret weapon. When Averell 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 despite his very cool, quite frosty exterior that he was quite insecure inside. They unleashed Pamela to seduce him. 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 Averell Harriman simply could not resist. By that time, a huge raid happened that night. 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. Shall we say that, well, as he put it later, there's nothing like the blitz to get things going.

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. Now, he was totally devoted to the British cause. 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 tell Roosevelt enough that, "We need to save the Brits."

Alison Stewart: It was an open secret, the relationship between Harriman and Pamela. Even Roosevelt knew about it. You know that the Churchills had a worldly approach to sex. What about the rest of the world?

Sonia Purnell: Yes, Churchill said their mothers have been unusually promiscuous. Well, there was a divided opinion. 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. It wasn't ever really in public, but it would be at the Churchills' country residence. For example, they would often be there at the same weekend. The Churchills would help to make sure that that happened.

If Averell's signature was in the visitor's book, then Pamela would quite often not sign it just to keep up appearances. There were times when Averell was invited to people's stately homes. Pamela would not be allowed to come along with him even though he would have liked her to be there. She had to be careful. 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, Ed Murrow, Fred Anderson, head of bomber command. Things were all her targeted seduction successes actually.

Alison Stewart: The journalist, Edward R. Murrow, he proved to be another of her lovers. He had an impact on her politically. He was a man of the people and he felt that she was spoiled. How did Murrow impact her work and where do we see it?

Sonia Purnell: Yes, a really interesting impact on her because she had been brought up an aristocrat. She was a Churchill, very much a Tory, a conservative. 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. Young aristocrats, especially ladies, did not do that. He also talked to her about the evils of segregation in America, what he had tried to do to stop that and reduce that and overturn that. Also, just saying that as someone of privilege, you have more of a duty than anyone to do something for those who do not come from your gilded background.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting. They were in the business of explaining one continent to the other, of explaining America to the English and English to Americans. How so?

Sonia Purnell: Well, at that point, the special relationship didn't exist. There was a lot of 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. In the bombing campaigns leading up to D-Day, the American view was that the bombing should take place by day because then there could be more precision. There'd be fewer civilian casualties on the ground.

The Brits thought it should happen at night because that was safer for aircrews and few of them would lose their lives. Two perfectly legitimate arguments, but very much diametrically opposed. 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. Gradually, a compromise was indeed found.

This was the sort of thing that she was extremely good at. She was this interlocutor, if you like, between 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. There was that explanation. Also, there was a wider thing where the two societies were quite different. You didn't have TV like you do now. You could never just jump on a plane and hop over to New York or hop over to London.

People didn't really understand each other. It was about trying to find those 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 American fashion saying, "Quarter of 10," whereas a Brit would say, "Quarter to 10." She would laugh about that and explain these different ways of saying things. She really was this great bridge between the two.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Sonia 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? What was the purpose of the attic?

Sonia Purnell: 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. It was cozy. It was elegant and beautiful furniture, a butler who served the food, and all this kind of thing. It was definitely cozy. 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.

They would sit around her table. She would almost always be the only woman, by the way, and because they were relaxed and it was good food. It felt cozy and comfortable. They would be very forthcoming in the way that they spoke. She would glean more information about the way that the Americans were thinking. Then at the end of the dinner, she would often hop in a car and arm a 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.

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. Actually, gradually, more and more and more she was peddling the American line to the Brits. She more and more saw that she felt sympathy for the way that the Americans were thinking and would be putting that thinking, advocating it, if you like, not just reporting it.

Alison Stewart: At this point in the book, you've mentioned relationships with Jock Whitney, Averell Harriman, Ed Murrow, Bill Paley, the head of CBS. I have to wonder, how did Pamela Harriman not get pregnant?

Sonia 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. They 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." 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.

Alison Stewart: 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?

Sonia Purnell: [chuckles] Well, it's funny, isn't it? Because, obviously, the Americans and the Brits were allies. Spying sounds like a hostile act. It was certainly never hostile. The whole idea was quite the reverse of that. There was an element of espionage in it, I believe. She saw it as her duty to try to help bring victory. That's what motivated her. 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. I hesitate to call her a spy for that reason. I think it is much more nuanced and complicated than that. It was something that was necessary before the special relationship existed. Maybe you can argue, I think, very clearly that it was a precursor to that and that, now, we have the Five Eyes, intelligence sharing operational, that sort of thing. That just didn't exist back then.

Alison Stewart: Tomorrow in Full Bio, life for Pamela after World War II.

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