Jennie Churchill: Winston's American MotherJohn Murray, 2007 - 398 pages After a three-day romance Brooklyn-born Jennie Jerome married into the British aristocracy to become Lady Randolph Churchill. At a time when women were afforded few freedoms, she was a cornerstone of high society and a behind-the-scenes political dynamo. However it was Jennie's love life that marked her out, causing scandal in its day and earning her the epithet 'more panther than woman'. She was sexually fearless at a time when women were supposed to be sexually vapid. Yet, in other ways, Jennie was deeply loyal to her husband. When he was dying of syphilis she took him on a round-the-world trip to conceal his violence and mania. He returned in a straitjacket with only weeks to live. After Randolph's death her great project became her son, Winston, with whom she was entwined in an intense mutual dependency. Jennie died suddenly in 1921 after a dramatic fall downstairs, having tripped over her high heels. Although Winston was not to become the nation's leader for another two decades, he had already acquired from his mother an unshakeable faith in his destiny. With unprecedented access to private family correspondence, newly discovered archival material and interviews with Jennie's two surviving granddaughters, Anne Sebba draws a vivid and frank portrait of her subject. She repositions Jennie as a woman who refused to be cowed by her era's customary repression of women. Neither a bad mother nor a sexually predatory wife, Jennie Churchill was creative and passionate, determined to live life to the full. |
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... hoped to give her girls the great gift of being able to choose their own destinies , a springboard from which she hoped they could use the talents she was ensuring they acquired . She also gave the family a French surname , adding two ...
... hoped that this clever son would follow his father into politics and represent the family borough of Woodstock , was the passage where he expressed his belief that the ' idle and comparatively useless life ' which he had been leading of ...
... hoped . * Shortly afterwards Breteuil announced that he was marrying an American heiress , Lita Garner , whose sister Florence had recently married the charming but unlucky Sir William Gordon - Cumming . Writing to Jennie on his return ...
Contents
Just Plain Jennie Contents | 1 |
Have Placed All my Hopes of Future Happiness in This World on | 42 |
Jennie is Quite Satisfied with Randolph Just | 73 |
Copyright | |
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