Pamela Harriman - Marriage To Randolph Churchill

Marriage To Randolph Churchill

In 1939, while working at the Foreign Office in London doing French-to-English translations, Pamela met Randolph Churchill, the son of Winston Churchill. Randolph proposed to her on the very evening they met, and they were married on 4 October 1939. Two days after Randolph Churchill took his seat in the House of Commons, their son Winston was born. Shortly after birth, Pamela and the newborn were photographed by Cecil Beaton for Life Magazine, its first cover of a mother with baby.

In February 1941, Randolph was sent to Cairo for military service, where he accrued large gambling debts. His letter to Pamela asking her to make good on his debts, along with her affair with Averell Harriman, combined to shatter their marriage. Eventually, she filed for divorce in December 1945 on the grounds that he had deserted her for three years. Later, after having converted to Catholicism, she obtained an annulment from the Catholic Church.