This is John Batchel. Kingmaker is the title of the new book from Sonia Pernel. Pamela Harriman's

astonishing life of power, seduction, and intrigue. Born 1920, Pamela Digby, she marries Randolph

Churchill spontaneously in October of 1939, having not met the man ever before.

He proposed to her one night in a dinner party or a club.

The war was on.

Randolph was expecting to go to war at any moment, and the expectation, in addition,

in those days, was that they would die on the front line the way their fathers and uncles had

died in the first war. The proposal was one of nine or eight. Randolph had issued in the last days. Pam Digby didn't know that.

She did say yes, and then Sonia Pernell makes it very clear that the marriage was never going to be successful.

Why? Randolph Churchill. Here's Sonia Pernell to explain. Pamela Digby, Churchill.

She will later be Pamela Digby Churchill Harriman, but not for many decades. More of this

tonight. Kingmaker, Sonia Pernell.

Well, a lot of people warn her, hoping she will pull out of the engagement.

But in a way, Pamela's one of those people that the more you warn her of something,

the more she wants to do it.

And she didn't ever really like changing her mind about things.

She's pretty stubborn, really, even as a young woman.

And anyway, what's the alternative?

To go back to Dorset, which she really doesn't want to do.

And so she takes a gamble.

It is a really big gamble, but she doesn't want to lose face either.

So she marries him, and it pretty quickly becomes clear what he's like, that he drinks so much, that he

...