From Mata Hari to Lola Montez, courtesans—or grandes horizontales—have always been fascinating to read about. One wonders what makes them so irresistible? A strategic fluttering of eyelashes? A luminescent smile? Or perhaps “a voice ever soft / Gentle and low—an excellent thing in a woman,” as Shakespeare observed.
What they all specialized in were prodigious powers of self invention, which brings us to Pamela Harriman, who may have been the greatest shape-shifting courtesan of the 20th century, and has not been given her due, according to Sonia Purnell’s Kingmaker. There have been two earlier biographies of Harriman, neither of them bent on re-envisioning her as a geopolitical player, as Purnell is, but content instead to present her as, well, just that, a courtesan.
