Dark Lady: Winston Churchill's Mother and Her World

by Charles Higham (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $3.28

  Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of England's greatest statesman, was a single-minded and dynamic woman, who overcame the scandal of a criminal father and an upbringing spent largely in exile in Europe, where she survived revolutions and mass murders, to be the first American woman to conquer London society and play a major role in British politics. In this sensational new book, best selling auther Charles Higham draws form previously overlooked sources in America and Britain to provide much that is startlingly new. Decades before women had the vote, Jennie broke the rules by compaigning at elections for her husband, Lord Randolph Churchill, pushing him from obscurity and uselessness to the most spectacular parliamentary career of the late Victorian era. The couple's role in the acquistion of Upper Burma's rubies and railways has disturbing parallels with the Iraq campaigns of our time. But, with her support, Lord Randolph exposed the wholesale corruption - and resultant major loss of life - in the Army and Navy, the real and never-previously-given reason for his notorious resignation from the gorvernment in 1885. Among Jennie's lovers were an Austrian spy, the illegitimate son of an Anglo-Irish earl, and various noblemen who, lier her second and third husbands, were in the same age group as her magnificent son, Winston Churchill. the age difference caused her to become the centre of a number of scandals, and she defied the political enemies t bring a powerful influence to bear on Winston as Home Secretary, when she urged him to bring about prison reform. 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. Decades before it finally became a reality, she also fought for a National Theatre of Great Britain. 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.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $5.01

  Jennie Jerome was a controversial American society girl and mother of Britain's most revered statesman, Winston Churchill. A single-minded and dynamic woman she was an early feminist, advocate of Irish independence, and, above all, was notorious for her promiscuity. Charles Higham draws from previously overlooked sources to provide much that is startlingly new about the remarkable and tempestuous life of Jennie Jerome. The book charts her luxurious New York upbringing, her eyebrow-raising entry into the British aristocracy through marriage to Lord Randolph Churchill, son of the Duke of Marlborough, her endless line of liaisons with men of vastly inferior years, and a very different sort of affair in the highest of high places - with the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII (one of many kings and princes to win her affection). Passionately in love with life, expressive of her sexuality when women were supposed to hide it, beautiful and independent minded, Jennie Jerome was decades ahead of her time.