Power, spies and political intrigue are the common factors in Sonia Purnell’s biography of Pamela Churchill Harriman (1920-97) and Nick Harkaway’s reworking of his father’s fictional world of George Smiley, writes book reviewer COLIN STEELE. 

David Cornwell wrote as John le Carré, while his son Nicholas writes as Nick Harkaway. 

Harkaway reflects that George Smiley “is woven into my life… I grew up with the evolution of the Circus, so this is a deeply personal journey for me, and of course it’s a journey which has to feel right to the le Carré audience”.

Karla’s Choice (Viking, $34.99), set soon after the events depicted in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963), features all the familiar le Carré characters, including Smiley’s wife Ann, Control, Guillam, Esterhase, Connie, Haydon and Mundt.

It begins in London in the spring of 1963, when a young Hungarian emigré, Susanna Gero, arrives one morning at her boss Laszlo Bánáti’s literary agency, only to find he has disappeared. When a Russian assassin arrives at the agency, she realises why, although the assassin has now changed his mind and wants to defect. 

Cue Susanna being put in touch with MI6, where Control persuades Smiley out of retirement, Smiley acknowledging the Circus is his “grey mistress”. 

Harkaway has said: “Susanna effectively brings Smiley a loose end… and in the aftermath of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, he tries to do something compassionate.”

The tracking of Bánáti takes Smiley and Susanna into the field, from Berlin to Vienna and into Hungary, after it becomes apparent Karla is pulling most of the Russian strings. Harkaway certainly succeeds with his “opportunity to tell the story of Karla becoming Smiley’s nemesis”.

SONIA Purnell describes Pamela Churchill Harriman as “the most powerful courtesan in history”, something of an overstatement, but certainly she had a stunning number of high-powered men in her life.

Pamela Digby, born into a cash-strapped aristocratic family, was sent as a 19-year-old, on to the London debutante circuit in 1939. The result was a marriage to Winston Churchill’s son Randolph, whom she had only dated for two weeks. 

Pamela belatedly realised Randolph was “a drunken, offensive adulterer”, who only wanted an heir. Winston Jr was born in 1940, but the couple divorced in 1946 after spending much of World War II apart.

Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine liked Pamela and introduced her to their social circles and, more particularly, the “the low cunning of high politics”. Winston and Lord Beaverbrook used Pamela as “a bedroom spy” as part of the effort of bringing America into World War II.

Her liaisons were impressive, including Roosevelt’s Land Lease liaison head, Averell Harriman, Ed Murrow, the famous CBS London broadcaster, Colonel. Jock Whitney in the Office of Strategic Services and Maj-Genl Frederick Anderson, head of the US Eighth Bomber Command.

After the war, Harriman continued to weave a “strategic” sex path amongst the rich and famous. Her life as a “grande horizontale” included affairs with Prince Aly Khan, Fiat CEO Gianni Agnelli, Baron Elie de Rothschild and William S Paley, owner of CBS. Paley’s wife was one of Truman Capote’s famous “swans”, as was Pamela, satirised as Lady Ina Coolbirth.

Pamela married wealthy Broadway producer Leland Hayward in 1960 and, after his death in 1971, quickly married billionaire Averell Harriman, her World War II lover, then 79. Pamela was regarded, to put it mildly, as “a gold digger” by the Hayward and Harriman families.

Pamela, having become an American citizen, became an effective fundraiser for the Democratic Party, so much so that her friend Bill Clinton appointed her at the age of 73 to become the first American female ambassador to France in 1993. 

Here she performed effectively, becoming the first foreign female diplomat to be awarded the Grand Croix of the Légion d’Honneur, although Paris Match called her “a cross between Lady Hamilton and Moll Flanders”. 

It was perhaps fitting in such an exotic life that she should die in 1997, at the age of 76, in the swimming pool of the Paris Ritz Hotel after a failed rescue by head of security Henri Paul, who was to drive Princess Diana to her death later that year.

Purnell does not avoid critical comments, but argues that some of the commentary that Pamela received would not have occurred if she had been a man – think Jack Kennedy and his relationships. 

Kingmaker (Virago, $34.99) is a compelling book about a remarkable woman, who defied the stereotypes of female deference in a male-dominated world.