Kingmaker

Purnell's subject, Pamela Harriman, moved from Churchill's daughter-in-law through a string of consequential lovers to U.S. ambassador to France, and the book's case is that her romantic entanglements were themselves a form of political operation rather than a distraction from one. That argument is the biography's most contested element: Purnell frames Harriman's affairs as strategically and patriotically motivated, a reading some critics have found asserted more forcefully than the evidence actually supports. Where the book is on firmer ground is its research into Harriman's access, tracing how she moved through Cold War-era rooms most women of her era never entered and used that access for concrete political ends later in life. It reads best as a portrait of proximity to power rather than a fully proven theory of intent.