Seductress of the century

Femme fatale Pamela Harriman was able to change the course of history by captivating leading political figures from Churchill to Clinton using a legendary kingmaking’ technique to devastating effect, as explained by Sonia Purnell

- Sonia Purnell

Pamela Harriman was attending the glitzy White House Correspondents’ dinner in spring 1993 when Barbra Streisand sidled up to her and whispered the question on many women’s lips: just what is your secret? The Hollywood star was 22 years Harriman’s junior but she was as transfixed as any by the British aristocrat’s legendary seductive powers, even as a 73-year-old grandmother.

Pamela gave only a full-throttled laugh in response. She had not become kingmaker of the Democratic Party – credited by the newly elected US president Bill Clinton for his once improbable ascent to the White House – by giving too much away. Only now, more than a quarter of a century after her death and with the release of her private papers as well as fresh testimony from those who knew her, is it clear just how she had succeeded in becoming the legendary “seductress of the century”.

Harriman had been born Pamela Digby, the eldest daughter of a minor Dorsetshire peer and raised to marry another local lord and lead a quiet country life. Like many girls of her class and generation, she had been denied a formal education but she had a quick, intuitive brain. And so when she had a chance, at the age of 19 in 1939, to enter the world of politics and London society by marrying Winston Churchill’s son Randolph – having known him for only a fortnight – she grabbed it.