Once known for naked encounters with the super-rich, Churchill’s racy daughter-in-law, Pamela Harriman, saved the life of a young JFK – then propelled Bill Clinton to the White House!

In an extract from her riveting new biography of Churchill’s daughter-in-law, published yesterday, Sonia Purnell tells how a woman dismissed as ‘the courtesan of the century’ was a political mastermind who used sex and seduction to bring America into the war. Today we reveal how Pamela Harriman conquered Europe – before she was swept away by the political charms of a young Bill Clinton…

When Fiat magnate Gianni Agnelli asked Pamela Harriman if she wanted to sail with him from the Côte d’Azur along the Italian coast to Capri, she declined.

Pamela was to have dinner that evening with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who had rented a villa nearby and had become friends with her.

Pamela had only recently divorced Winston Churchill’s pompous son Randolph. She barely knew Gianni and spoke no Italian.

Moreover, this was 1948, the war was still fresh in people’s minds – and Fascist Italy was an ally of Hitler. While Pamela had rendered invaluable services as Churchill’s assistant, the Agnellis had enriched themselves as suppliers of trucks and tanks to the Italian and German armies.

Then a telegram arrived from her overbearing ex-husband, announcing that he was on his way to the South of France to see her, which changed her mind.

Thick clouds obscured the starry sky as they boarded Gianni’s 40-foot yacht. He ignored weather warnings and the boat was soon cutting through huge waves.

A glass of water on a shelf above her bed broke and cut Pamela’s forehead. So at first light, with blood all over the cabin, they sailed to Portofino on the Ligurian coast, from where Gianni took her to hospital in Turin.

Meanwhile, as she waited there for the stitches to be removed, Randolph called everyone he knew in Italy to scream down the phone, “Where is she? Is she whoring?”

Pamela was soon back on board Gianni’s yacht, which now sailed through calmer waters to Capri. There they stayed in a pastel-colored villa rented by his friend, Count Rudi Crespi, an executive of an international magazine.

They arrived late at night and when Rudi entered their room the next morning with coffee, Gianni threw open the shutters and said, ‘I want you to meet Pam. I’m crazy about her.’

She came in, naked, and walked over to Rudi, who noticed the milkiness of her skin. She shook his hand, sat down on the bed and ‘modestly’ crossed her legs.

An astonished Rudi told friends that she was the first natural redhead he had ever seen.

After moving to America in 1959 to marry the great Broadway producer Leland Hayward, Pamela seized the opportunity to rekindle her wartime friendship with Ike Eisenhower (now President) while helping Jack Kennedy in his campaign to succeed him.

But it wasn’t until Hayward died and Pamela finally married her wartime lover Averell Harriman—now a former Democratic Party politician—that she finally made waves in Washington’s power circles.

Even Richard Nixon was moved by her past, interrupting the balance of payments conversation to ask his national security adviser Henry Kissinger for an extensive briefing on Pamela’s time in Downing Street.

He later invited her to the White House to hear her thoughts on why Churchill had lost the 1945 election and how he could improve his own chances in the election.

Although she was not enthusiastic about Jimmy Carter as a candidate, Pamela worked hard to get him elected in 1976, raising money for the Democrats. In 1980, she was named Democratic Woman of the Year.

Pamela could do nothing to stop the Republican landslide that elected Reagan later that year. Still, it was a chance, regardless.

While the Democrats were grounded, divided and near bankruptcy, Pamela, at age 61, was strengthened by adversity and put her years of experience to work.

“Pamela learned from Winston Churchill what leadership means,” noted one party official, who showed “joy amid the devastation.”

She soon used her name, reputation, and beautiful art-filled home in Georgetown to raise money, research new policies, and search for a presidential candidate who could finally end the Democrats’ long streak of defeats.

Long before others saw Bill Clinton as an unusual political talent, brushing aside widespread concerns that he was merely a governor of a backward state with no chance of entering the White House.

The British aristocrat, who owned five homes and a safe full of jewels, saw that an infirm figure from Hope, Arkansas, however unlikely, could still make it to the White House.

Impressed by his ability to play the crowd, exude a crucial optimism and understand the broader political picture, she set about promoting and raising his profile.

She advised Clinton, especially on international affairs.

He once wrote that he had “no doubt” that without her support he “would not have been fully prepared to stand before America and the world” as president.

In return, he gave her the job as ambassador. Both Clinton and President Chirac of France relied heavily on her as a conduit to Europe during the Bosnian war in the early 1990s.

Her own experiences of the Blitz led her to lobby repeatedly and strenuously for Western intervention to end the bloodshed.

When she died in 1997, a grieving Chirac described her as an “unsurpassed diplomat,” going so far as to compare her skills to great American predecessors such as Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.

At her funeral, Clinton told attendees that he was president “in no small measure” because of her unique skills and experiences, but also because of her joy in life itself — a “vivid sense of history and the wisdom gained from its great events.” [that] she had helped shape it’.