Synopses & Reviews
In this sensational new book, bestselling author Charles Higham draws from previously overlooked sources in America and Britain to tell the fascinating story of Jennie Jerome, mother of Winston Churchill feminist, advocate of Irish independence, and notoriously promiscuous society belle. It charts her luxurious New York upbringing, eyebrow-raising entry into the British aristocracy through marriage to Lord Randolph Churchill, her endless line of liaisons with much younger men and a very different sort of affair in the highest of places with the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII (one of many kings and princes to win her affection). Long before women had the vote, Jennie broke the rules by campaigning in elections for her husband, Lord Randolph Churchill. A staunch freethinker, she edited her own magazine, fought for Protestant interests in Ireland and sailed a hospital ship to South Africa, where she risked her life in the Boer War. Passionately in love with life, expressive of her sexuality when women were supposed to hide it, beautiful and independent minded, Jennie Churchill was decades ahead of her time.
Synopsis
This is the fascinating story of Jennie Jerome, mother of Winston Churchill, and her rise through New York society to being the wife of a British aristocrat.
About the Author
Son of the advertising pioneer Sir Charles Frederick Higham, MP, Charles Higham is the author of Howard Hughes: The Secret Life, a basis of the film The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. His Mrs Simpson: Secret Lives of the Duchess of Windsor, has been a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and he has written bestselling lives of Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis and Orson Welles. A former New York Times feature writer and recipient of the Académie Française Prize of the Creators, he lives in Los Angeles.