Kingmaker Sonia Purnell and Leo McCann
Event details
Our world is facing severe and interlocking crises. People are crying out for ‘good leadership’ in a time of uncertainty and anxiety. But what is ‘leadership’ exactly? Why are the standards of leadership often so poor? Who gets to be a leader? What motivates leaders’ pursuit of power and influence? Who gets to develop and promote them? From what social worlds do our leaders emerge?
Bestselling author and journalist Sonia Purnell will discuss the complexities, intricacies and mysteries of leadership as told through the lessons of her most recent book Kingmaker. The biography tells the story of Pamela Churchill Harriman, a trailblazing but badly misunderstood figure of the 20th century.
The daughter-in-law of Winston Churchill, Harriman played significant but heavily overlooked roles in ‘free world’ society and politics. Closely associated with such figures as the Kennedys and the Clintons, Nelson Mandela, Truman Capote, Gianni Agnelli, Kay Graham, Gloria Steinem and Frank Sinatra, she had an innate sense of how power works and how it might be used. Growing up in a world where female access to education, professions and power was almost non-existent through formal means, Harriman’s life is a fascinating story of the largely invisible, socio-cultural elements of political influence.
In conversation with Leo McCann of the University of York, Sonia will weave a dramatic, radically new narrative of how an aristocratic British woman developed multiple social, political and advisory roles in the elite backstages of the Cold War transatlantic. A formidable force, Harriman’s social network linked together the great and the good of US political and cultural leadership. By the end of her life she was the US Ambassador to France and one of the most influential powerbrokers of Democrat circles.
Join Sonia and Leo and discover how Harriman’s colourful life provides precious clues about our aspirations for ‘good leadership’ and why it often remains so elusive.
Book sales
You can buy copies of many of our speakers’ books from Fox Lane Books, a local independent bookseller and Festival partner. In some cases, author signed bookplates are available too.
About the speakers
Sonia Purnell is a prize-winning and bestselling biographer hailed as having 'the eye of an historian for rigour, a journalist's for detail and a storyteller's for drama’ (Financial Times). Her latest work Kingmaker: Pamela Churchill Harriman's astonishing life of seduction, power and intrigue, was published to huge media acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Her work on Virginia Hall, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of Virginia Hall, WWII's Most Dangerous Spy, won the 2020 Plutarch Award for Best Biography and was a New York Times bestseller. Her book First Lady: The Life and Wars of Clementine Churchill was a book of the year in the Daily Telegraph, the Independent and Lenny Letter, and was shortlisted for the Plutarch Award for Best Biography. Her first book, Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition, was longlisted for the Orwell prize.
Leo McCann is Professor of Management at the School for Business and Society, University of York, UK. His academic background is in the disciplines of sociology and history. Leo teaches and writes about work, management and leadership, with his sociological work focusing on a range of occupations, including healthcare, policing and uniformed occupations. His historical research has focused on the ‘leadership lessons’ that can be drawn from the careers of US political elites such as the Kennedy brothers and the former Secretary of Defence Robert S. McNamara.
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