Dark Lady: Winston Churchill's Mother and Her World by Charles Higham - 2006

New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc, 2006. Book. Fine. Hardcover. First American Edition. 9h x 5 1/2w. A 256 page first American edition hardcover. Clean and solid with previous owners name blacked out on first blank end page. Has nice photo section. Fascinating story of Jennie Jerome, mother of Winston Churchill - feminist, advocate of Irish independence, and notoriously promiscuous society belle. It charts her luxurious New York upbringing, eyebrow-raising entry into the British aristocracy through marriage to Lord Randolph Churchill, her endless line of liaisons with much younger men and a very different sort of affair in the highest of places - with the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. Long before women had the vote, Jennie broke the rules by campaigning in elections for her husband, Lord Randolph Churchill. A staunch freethinker, she edited her own magazine, fought for Protestant interests in Ireland and sailed a hospital ship to South Africa, where she risked her life in the Boer War. Passionately in love with life, expressive of her sexuality when women were supposed to hide it, beautiful and independent minded, Jennie Churchill was decades ahead of her time..