Aged seventeen, Pamela Digby was sent to a boarding school in Muenchen and later maintained that, in the six months spent there, she was introduced to Adolf Hitler by Unity Mitford. In 1939 she went to work at the Foreign Office in London, doing translations from French for which she was paid œ6 a week.
While being shown the flat she was going to rent, the phone rang. When she answered, it was Randolph Churchill who asked her out to dinner. Within ten days they were engaged and a week later they were married. With the exception of Winston and Clementine Churchill, Randolph's parents, everybody was against the marriage. One reason for the objections was their lack of money, to which Winston remarked: "Nonsense! All you need to be married is champagne, a double bed and a box of cigars!"
However, married life began on the wrong footing when Randolph, wanting to improve her education, began to read in bed to her Gibbon's  "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". Hilaire Belloc would have been fine, she maintained, but Gibbon was too much.
When Pamela became pregnant, to be close to a doctor she went to live with her parents-in-law at 10 Downing Street, where she spent many nights in the air-raid shelter. On 8 October 1940 Randolph took his seat in the House of Commons and two days later their son, Winston, was born.

In 1941 Randolph went with the army to Africa; but while on board the ship taking them there, he gambled and lost œ3,000. From Cape Town he sent Pamela a telegram which shattered their marriage. Never having been in debt before her marriage, she was already worried about bills,
debts and people threatening to sue for payment; now she had to find another œ10 per month to pay off this debt. Accordingly, she sold all her wedding presents and took a œ12-a-week job at the Ministry of Supply. Pregnant again but, with all the tension, she miscarried. She paid off the debts but security in her marriage was gone.
When Averall Harriman, a representative of the American President, was introduced to her they started an affaire. Pamela regarded him "the most beautiful man I had ever set eyes on". When he
had to go to Cairo, it was Randolph who showed him around Egypt. In July 1941 when Harriman returned to England, Randolph asked him to take a letter to Pamela in which he jokingly referred to Harriman as his rival in her affection. It took until 1942 before Randolph realised what was going on. He then had a furious row with his father as he maintained that his parents had condoned Pamela's affaire. After this his mother banned him from their home for the rest of the war, fearing Winston might have a seizure.
At the suggestion of Brendan Bracken, Pamela established a social club to enable professional men and women from the U.S.A. and Canadian forces, while off duty in London, to meet their British counterparts. As agreed, after the war in 1946 Pamela and Randolph divorced. Pamela then moved to Paris and her son spent his school holidays with his grandparents.
In 1948 she began a five-years affaire with Gianni Agnelli which would be the happiest period of her life. However, Gianni Agnelli was unfaithful and became more blatantly so as the years went on. In 1952 she surprised him in their bedroom with a young girl. She threw them both out and Agnelli, while driving the girl home, was involved in a car accident and grievously injured. His right leg, which had been broken before, was crushed and broken in seven places. His leg was put in a plaster cast which was too tight and caused gangrene. As he had taken cocaine, the required operation could only be performed under a local anesthetic. Pamela was present and covered
his eyes while the operation was performed. Gianni's recovery, which Pamela supervised, took months. Afterwards she became pregnant but had an abortion in Switzerland. Pamela began to give up hope of ever marrying him and, when Princess Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto became pregnant by him, she suggested that he marry her. Many years later Marella said about her husband: "For Gianni, a woman is to be conquered. Not to be loved."
Then Baron Elie de Rothschild came into her life and, as he was married, discretion was required. She spent much of her time learning about art, history, techniques of wine-making and furniture. However, this relationship did not last.
In 1959, in search of a husband, Pamela went to live in New York and, already having renewed their acquaintance, on 4 May 1960 married the Broadway producer, Leland Hayward. This prompted her remark: "Theatre and politics are alike; they're both made up of triumphs and
disasters". In the spring of 1971 Leland Hayward died and, on 27 September 1971, she married Averell Harriman. Born in 1891 Harriman  died on 26 July 1986, having maintained that marrying Pamela had been the best thing he ever had done.
As Pamela Churchill Harriman she became involved in politics and created a fund-raising system which helped to return the Democratic party return to the White House. In her opinion, when Clinton was copying President Kennedy, "Where Jack Kennedy was born to power, Bill Clinton got there all by himself." In September 1992 she opened up her Virginia estate for a ten-thousand-dollar-a-head Day in the country for Clinton and Gore and raised $3.2 million. Many people were surprised when President Clinton appointed her U.S. Ambassador to France. In 1997 when she died of a brain hemorrhage, President Clinton praised her as "one of the most unusual and gifted people I ever met".
 

Source: Leo van de Pas