Hachette India

Jennie Churchill

Anne Sebba

After a three-day romance Brooklyn-born Jennie Jerome married into the British aristocracy, becoming Lady Randolph Churchill. At a time when women were afforded few freedoms, she was a behind-the-scenes political dynamo. However it was Jennies love life that marked her out, earning her the epithet more panther than woman. In other ways, Jennie was deeply loyal to her husband. When he was dying of syphilis she took him on a round-the-world trip to conceal his violence and mania.

Her great project became her son, Winston, with whom she was entwined in an intense mutual dependency. Jennie died suddenly in 1921 and although Winston was not to become the nation's leader for another two decades, he had acquired from his mother an unshakeable faith in his destiny.

With unprecedented access to private family correspondence, newly discovered archival material and interviews with Jennie's two surviving granddaughters, Anne Sebba draws a vivid and frank portrait of her subject. She repositions Jennie as a woman who refused to be cowed by her eras customary repression of women. Jennie Churchill was creative and passionate, determined to live life to the full.

Anne Sebba

Anne Sebba is a historian and one of Britain's most distinguished biographers who began her career as a Reuters correspondent based in London and Rome. She has written eleven works of non-fiction, mostly about iconic twentieth-century women, which have been translated into several languages including French, Polish, Czech, Japanese and Chinese. She makes regular television and radio appearances and has presented two BBC radio documentaries about musicians. She is the author of the international bestseller That Woman, an acclaimed biography of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, and the prize-winning Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died Under Nazi Occupation. Her most recent book, Ethel Rosenberg: The Short Life and Great Betrayal of an American Wife and Mother, was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize. Anne is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research and trustee of the National Archives Trust. She lives in London.

Jennie Churchill

Anne Sebba

Anne Sebba

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