Kingmaker

Praise

This is a deliciously seductive read. Sonia Purnell escorts readers behind the scenes, beneath the covers, and between the lines in an enthralling and exhaustive portrait of Pamela Harriman, whose life and legacy have long deserved the kind of insightful treatment that someone with Purnell’s storytelling talents can provide. Harriman stands fully and uncompromisingly on her own, a testament to Purnell’s sumptuous prose and unrelenting investigative talents—Kingmaker is masterfully wrought. 
—Denise Kiernan, New York Times bestselling author of The Girls of Atomic City, The Last Castle, and We Gather Together

A completely fascinating and revelatory biography, written with great aplomb, insight and shrewd analysis. A triumph.
—William Boyd, Booker–nominated author of Any Human Heart

With Kingmaker, Sonia Purnell emerges as one of the most accomplished biographers of our time. Once again, she gifts readers with a vivid, glittering, sexy, scintillating, beautifully written portrait of a woman who drove twentieth-century history even as history was driving her. Wife, courtesan, hostess, muse, mistress, social climber, fundraiser, ambassador: The English language has no single word to describe an ambitious female whose fate (across generations) depended on her skill at connecting, cajoling, wooing, and winning over. Today, of course, we’d call her a politician. Kingmaker is a rich and nuanced study of power—its allure, its perils, the gratifications and the great cost of its pursuit. 
—Liza Mundy, New York Times bestselling author of The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA

A superb and fascinating account of Pamela Churchill Harriman’s life. It certainly puts the record straight and I can’t recommend it more.
—Lady Anne Glenconner, bestselling author of Lady in Waiting

A perfumed seductress with a big heart and even bigger hair, Pamela Harriman trailed jewels and luxury as she befriended everyone from Sinatra and Mandela to Kennedy and Nixon. In Kingmaker, Sonia Purnell triumphantly resurrects this British-born aristocrat (and daughter-in-law of Winston Churchill) whose life was intertwined with many of the greatest movers and shakers of the twentieth century. Addicted to men with riches and power, Pamela’s lack of formal education proved no handicap to her becoming President Clinton’s hand-picked ambassador to France. Meticulously researched and served up with great panache, this is the biography that Pamela Harriman so richly deserves.
—Giles Milton, author of The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance that Won the War

“a vibrant portrait of an influential political player … Meticulous research informs a captivating biography.”
—Kirkus, Starred Review

“A compulsively readable, multifaceted portrait of an oft-misunderstood woman whose role in twentieth-century geopolitics has, until now, been severely underappreciated.”
—Booklist, Starred Review