25 September 2024

From Carol Woolton to Sonia Purnell: new books reviewed in short

Also featuring Red Threads by Henry Bell and The Story of Nature by Jeremy Mynott.

Kingmaker: Pamela Churchill Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Seduction, Intrigue and Power by Sonia Purnell

Reputations, once earned, are hard to shake. Pamela Harriman’s has been particularly tenacious: she is the grande dame of grandes horizontales. The tag was well earned – among a succession of well-born or rich men she bedded were Winston Churchill’s son Randolph (who proposed on the evening they met), Prince Aly Khan, Gianni Agnelli, Baron Élie de Rothschild, Stavros Niarchos and the banker and diplomat Averell Harriman. These were useful men and as one society acquaintance put it: “She seemed to attach better than anyone.”

This voracity, according to the biographer Sonia Purnell, was only part of the story. More interesting, she says, was the way Harriman finessed her amours into political influence. During the war, her father-in-law, Winston Churchill, used her to schmooze the Americans, while as Harriman’s wife she had access to the upper echelons of the Democrats and promoted and mentored Bill Clinton. Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Frank Sinatra and Donald Trump (whose gaucheness she found “hilarious”) are among those with walk-on parts. Purnell’s achievement in this vivid narrative is to show just why so many men and women of influence wanted her blessing.
By Michael Prodger
Virago, 528pp, £25

If Jewels Could Talk: Seven Secret Histories by Carol Woolton

In If Jewels Could Talk, the former jewellery editor of British Vogue Carol Woolton opens up a dazzling world by focusing on seven types of ornaments. Although adornments are often regarded as a means of beautification and self-expression, Woolton shows they are noteworthy in the understanding of humans, eras and cultures. Take, for example, the identification of plant fibres dating back to 1400s Europe used for a beaded ornament in an Alaskan settlement, which means that transatlantic trade was established between native Americans and Europe before Columbus’s arrival.

Scientists have confirmed that forms of natural and simple jewellery existed 150,000 years ago, and since then gemstones, beads, hoops and head ornaments have been continuously used to calm our anxieties and give us “a sense of control in circumstances where it’s lacking”. Coral, for example, is thought to protect fishermen in Italy. Filled with fascinating facts and cultural observations, Woolton engagingly guides the reader through history, making you wish that jewels could in fact talk.
By Zuzanna Lachendro
Gallery, 288pp, £18.99

The Story of Nature: A Human History by Jeremy Mynott

Our relationship with the natural world prompts many questions. Did humans domesticate wheat or did this vital crop instead domesticate us? What can be truly deemed natural? And are we as human beings distinctly apart from or intrinsically linked to nature? Jeremy Mynott unpacks all of these questions and more in his new book, intriguingly subtitled “A Human History”.

It is clear that Mynott has found his answer to the exact place of Homo sapiens in the story of Earth. We are an essential part of its environment, its evolution, and the threat of destruction it currently – and tragically – faces.

By tracing human explorations of nature back to the very earliest artworks, rudimentary cave painting, Mynott posits that humans have always been fascinated by, and dependent upon, their ecological surroundings. Not to be missed is the book’s chapter on the romantic poets of the 18th century, whose humble fascination with England’s hills, fells and dales was beautifully transposed into the verse of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the sublime poetry and artwork of William Blake. This is a roundly enthusiastic book, which carefully joins artistic and literary criticism with scientific explanation.
By Megan Kenyon
Yale University press, 376pp, £25

Red Threads: A History of the People’s Flag by Henry Bell

How does a flag become a symbol? That is what the Scottish author Henry Bell investigates in this emotive history of the red flag (a term for which Bell invents progressively creative synonyms). He charts the path of the “scarlet standard” from symbol of monarchical violence and piracy through to revolution. As a historian of Glasgow’s labouring past and giver of “radical” tours of the city, his is steadfastly a history of and from the left.

Red Threads can flatten the contextual quirks of different periods, conflating historical trajectory with qualities intrinsic to the “crimson emblem”. And the whorl of history sometimes finds itself in vassalage to the flag’s rise – “There are few events in the history of the red flag,” we are told, “more momentous than the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917.” But Bell does draw out fascinating details, such as the evolving manufacture of red dye, and his global scope reminds us of the power of international solidarity. Fortunately, once his tub-thumping earnestness for the vermilion ensign draws the reader in, the book’s methodological flaws become as absorbing as its strengths.
By Barney Horner
Pluto Press, 368pp, £25