20th century British history
A01=Harriet Cullen
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American politics
Author_Harriet Cullen
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British Museum
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=BG
Category=BGH
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eq_biography-true-stories
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Fashion and Petticoat Power
Fleet Street
Florence
In the Thick of It
Language_English
Marriage
Motherhood and War
mothers and daughters
museum intriguer
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Passion
political gossip
political scandal
Price_€20 to €50
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society hostess
softlaunch
Suez crisis
Telegraph newspapers
The It Girl: Socialite on Slender Means
The Redhead and the Hostess
V & A Museum
Product details
- ISBN 9781916846661
- Weight: 830g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 27 Mar 2025
- Publisher: Unicorn Publishing Group
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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This is a biography lightened with the intimate tone of a social memoir, about a woman who was both a bystander and protagonist through some fifty years of twentieth-century British history. Pamela Berry was the daughter of the buccaneering and brilliant politician and lawyer, FE Smith, the first Earl of Birkenhead, and married the son of another self-made man, William Berry from South Wales, who became Viscount Camrose and the owner of a group of national newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph. She had an unusually glamorous and precocious childhood, spoiled by her adoring father, and much photographed by Cecil Beaton. In her prime she used her position as a newspaper proprietor’s wife to become the most famous political and press hostess of her generation, harnessing her beauty and wit to influence successive governments, and was accused of wielding ‘petticoat power’ during the Suez crisis. She had a decade-long affair with Malcolm Muggeridge, became a vigorous promoter of British fashion, dragging it out of the dowdy fifties, and in later life was active in the museum world.
Harriet Cullen has opened a window back into the remarkable story of her mother’s life from a rich cache of family diaries and letters, interweaving them with many other unpublished sources. It is revealing, in turns scathing and admiring, but always entertaining.
Harriet Cullen is a freelance writer and has contributed to History Today, the Daily Telegraph, the Keats-Shelley Review and Starhaven Press. She is married to the Argentine novelist Martín Cullen, has two sons, and lives between Argentina and London. For many years she was Chair of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association.
