Pamela Harriman
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Pamela Harriman (20 March 1920–5 February 1997) was a Washington, D.C. socialite, diplomat and celebrity.
She was born Pamela Beryl Digby in Farnborough, Hampshire, England, the daughter of Edward Kenelm Digby, 11th Baron Digby of Geashill and his wife Constance Pamela Alice, née Bruce.
At age seventeen she was sent to a Munich boarding school for six months, writing later that she had been introduced to Adolf Hitler by Unity Mitford at that time. In 1939 she went to work at the Foreign Office in London doing French to English translations.
When being shown a flat to rent, the phone rang and she answered it. It was Randolph Churchill, who asked her to dinner: within ten days they were engaged and a week later, on 4 October 1939, were married. Randolph decided to improve her education by reading Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to her in bed. Within months, she became pregnant, and went to live with her in-laws at 10 Downing Street. Two days after Randolph took his seat in the House of Commons, their son Winston was born.
Randolph's gambling debts required the sale of their wedding presents and for Pamela to be employed: she took a job in the Ministry of Supply. This was Pamela's first experience with debt. She miscarried a second pregnancy, attributing it to stress.
She was introduced to Averell Harriman and began an affair which led ultimately to her 1946 divorce from Randolph and friction between him and his parents, whom he maintained had condoned the affair.
Romantic Involvements
She led a very full love life, including three marriages and many affairs, including those with Edward Roscoe Murrow (1904-1965); John Hay "Jock" Whitney (1904-1982), philanthropist and diplomat, last owner of the New York Herald Tribune; Prince Aly Khan (1911-1960), son of Aga Khan III and Therese Magliano; Gianni Agnelli (1921-2003), son of Edoardo Agnelli and Virginia dei Marchesi Bourbon del Monte Santa Maria; and Baron Elie de Rothschild (born 1917), son of Baron Robert Philippe de Rothschild and Nelly Beer.
After divorce from Randolph Churchill, she moved to Paris and in 1948 began her five-year-long affair with Gianni Agnelli. She described this as the happiest period of her life. Agnelli, however, was not faithful in this relationship: in 1952 Pamela discovered him in bed with a young girl and threw them out, and Agnelli sustained a severe leg injury in a car accident while bringing the girl home. Pamela nursed him through his injury, and became pregnant, having an abortion in Switzerland. When Princess Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto became pregnant by Agnelli, Pamela moved on.
Her next relationship was with Baron Elie de Rothschild, who was married. She learned about art history and wine-making during this clandestine and short relationship. Infuriated by her husband's affair with Harriman, Liliane de Rothschild reportedly drove her car into Harriman's; adding insult to injury, the aggrieved baroness reportedly was forced by her husband to pay for the repairs to his mistress's car.
In 1959 she took up residence in New York, renewing her acquaintanceship with Broadway producer Leland Hayward, whom she married on 4 May 1960 in Carson City, Nevada. He died on 18 March 1971. Pamela married her former lover Averell Harriman on 27 September 1971. This marriage lasted until his death in 1986.
Political Involvement
As Pamela Churchill Harriman she became involved in the Democratic Party and created a fund-raising system that helped return that party to the White House. In return, in 1993, U.S. President Bill Clinton appointed her U.S. Ambassador to France. She died in Paris, after having a stroke at the Ritz.
External link
- http://www.wm.edu/harriman/harrimanhome.html (The Pamela Harriman Foreign Service Fellowship)pl:Pamela Harriman