A Box in the Attic: The Wartime Letters of Kathy Harriman
by Giles Milton
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Some five years ago I was tipped off about a box of long-forgotten wartime letters that revealed a truly remarkable story.
The letters had been written by a young American socialite named Kathy Harriman and they described how she had spent two years during the Second World War living alongside Winston Churchill. She had spent a further two years in the company of Joseph Stalin.
The discovery of such letters and diaries - hitherto unknown - is every historian’s dream. I spend much of my time in public archives, combing through box-files and folders in search of nuggets of historical gold. How much more satisfying to find those nuggets in someone’s family archive – nuggets which have lain unread for many years.
I contacted Kathy Harriman’s son, David Mortimer, who confirmed that he had indeed stumbled across his mother’s wartime papers – not just letters and diaries, but photographs, scrapbooks and newspaper articles. ‘You should come to New York,’ he said. ‘You can see them for yourself.’
I took up his offer and was astonished by what I found. There were hundreds of letters and photographs, as well as two large scrapbooks. These revealed a compelling story. Kathy’s experiences of the Second World War were unlike those of anyone else, for she had spent her wartime years in close proximity to the ‘Big Three’ wartime leaders.
Chruchill, Roosavelt and Stalin, left to right, at the Yalta Conference 1945 Image: IWM (NAM 236)
Her story begins in 1941, when her father – the multi-millionaire railroad tycoon, Averell Harriman – was handpicked by President Roosevelt to be his personal emissary to Winston Churchill. Harriman asked if his daughter Kathy could accompany him, aware that her effortless elegance would add lustre to his image.
Kathy was only twenty-three, but she had poise, guts, and an insatiable curiosity. A lively brunette with a forthright manner, she looked a million dollars in her Worth skirts and silk stockings. More importantly, she was a keen observer of the world around her. All these observations went into her letters home.
Averell and Kathy arrived in England in the spring of 1941. Within days, they were ushered into Winston Churchill’s inner circle, spending their weekends at the Prime Minister’s country house, Chequers.
Kathy was quick to realise that she was in a unique position to witness the war from the inside. No sooner had she arrived than she began writing letters to her sister, Mary, describing her life with the Churchill family.
Some of her letters were handwritten in pencil, while others were written on her portable Underwood typewriter, which she bought soon after her arrival in England. All of them are chatty and gossipy in tone – a sister-to-sister correspondence that was never intended to be published.
In one of her early letters to Mary, she described her first encounter with Winston Churchill. ‘It’s rather a shock meeting someone you’ve seen caricatured so many times,’ she wrote. ‘The Prime Minister is much smaller than I expected and a lot less fat. He wears a blue Jaeger one-piece (the only way to keep warm in that house) and looks rather like a kindly blue teddy bear.’
Churchill was utterly charming and gushed with kindly sentiments. ‘He expresses himself wonderfully and continually comes out with delightful statements. I’d expected an overpowering, rather terrifying man. He is quite the opposite, very gracious, has a wonderful smile and is not at all hard to talk to.’ She added that ‘he has the kind of eyes that look right through you’.
Kathy observed everything and everyone, providing her sister with a unique insider’s view of the Churchill household. She could write exactly what she wanted, because she sent the letters by diplomatic bag, thereby avoiding the strict wartime censors.
‘Mrs C is a very sweet lady,’ she wrote. ‘She’s given up her whole life to her husband and takes a back seat very graciously.’ Kathy couldn’t help feeling sorry for Clementine. ‘Everyone in the family looks upon him as god and she’s rather left out, so that when anyone pays her any attention, she’s overjoyed.’
Kathy detected a steely core to Clementine Churchill, viewing her as a point of stability in a household where nerves were often on edge. ‘She has a mind of her own,’ she told her sister. ‘Only she’s big enough not to use it unless he [Churchill] wants her to.’
During dinner that night, Kathy had an enthusiastic discussion with the Prime Minister about Tommy guns. She also chatted with senior RAF officials, who were continually updating the prime minister on that night’s bombing raids. ‘Getting their reactions is like entering another world. The war, the bombing, is so completely objective to them.’ At one point they informed Churchill of the terrible news that Crete had just capitulated to the Nazis. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on the PM’s face when he came in and told us. Words can’t describe it.’
That weekend at Chequers was Kathy’s induction into the world of power and privilege that she was to inhabit for the next four years. Her own background, education, and wealth provided a buttress to any nerves she might have felt, yet her performance was nevertheless remarkable. Breezily confident, she sailed through that first evening with the prime minister.
After dinner, everyone adjourned to the drawing room to watch That Hamilton Woman, the latest film by Alexander Korda. Kathy was moved by it, but not as much as her hosts. ‘All the Churchills cried,’ she wrote. ‘That impressed me terribly.’
Churchill was infamous for his mood swings, as Kathy was to witness the following day. The prime minister, so gay the previous evening, seemed deflated. At that night’s dinner, she plucked up the courage to ask him why. His answer reflected his mood.
‘Turkey is giving in,’ he told her. ‘All Europe is swaying towards a Hitler victory. They are giving in. We need a victory.’ There was a long pause, as if the cares of the world had left him drained. And then he turned to her and said: ‘I’d like to be a cat – without worries.’
Kathy soon became close friends with the Prime Minister’s daughter-in-law, Pamela Churchill. Pamela was infatuated with her father, Averell, who was both charming and extremely good looking and they began a passionate affair. It is one of the few subjects not mentioned in Kathy’s letters.
Kathy spent a great deal of her time with the Churchills and was witness to many of the most momentous moments of the war. In one long letter to her sister, written from Chequers, she described the evening when Churchill learned news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Churchill leaped up from his chair in a burst of energy and bawled: ‘We shall declare war on Japan!’ He was in ebullient mood, realising that America would now be drawn into the war – an outcome that would change everything. In the autumn of 1943, Kathy and her father were sent to Moscow. Averell was to work as Roosevelt’s ambassador to Joseph Stalin, while Kathy was to work as his aide. She wrote an ever-increasing number of letters to her sister, once again sending them by diplomatic bag and thereby circumventing Stalin’s censors. This enabled her to write with unusual frankness about life in Moscow.
She met with Stalin soon after her arrival in the Soviet capital. She found him convivial and good humoured, although she was quick to realise that he was adept at concealing his monstrous crimes under a veneer of charm. ‘He had a rotund tubby figure with a clumsy gait that really did resemble a bear’s,’ she wrote. ‘He shook hands in an unassuming way. His face was pockmarked, swarthy, with a big walrus-like mustache. His eyes had a yellowish tinge.’
When Churchill visited Moscow in the following year, Kathy was invited to join him and Stalin at a performance of the Bolshoi ballet, an event that she described in a long letter to Pamela Churchill.
‘Averell and I were invited to sit in the royal box. The PM arrived late, with Uncle Joe coming in some minutes afterwards, so the audience didn’t realise they were there till the lights went on after the first act. A cheer went up (something that I’ve never seen happen here) and Uncle Joe ducked out so that the PM could have all the applause for himself, which was a very nice gesture. ‘But the PM sent [Commissar] Vyshinsky out to get Uncle Joe back, and they stood together while the applause went on for many minutes. It was most, most impressive – the sound like a cloudburst on a tin roof. It came from below, on all sides, and above, and the people down in the audience said they were thrilled seeing the two men standing together.’
Kathy was given unprecedented access to Stalin’s commissars, and she also got to visit Soviet schools, factories and hospitals. This was a unique privilege which enabled her to write highly revealing accounts about everyday life in Moscow, as well as often-amusing character sketches of the Soviet elite. The high point of Kathy’s time in the Soviet Union came at the Yalta Conference, when she was appointed hostess to President Roosevelt. ‘Well I’ve at last had my wish and met the President,’ she wrote to her sister, Mary. ‘It seems kind of odd it would be in Russia. He’s absolutely charming, easy to talk to, with a lovely sense of humor.’
Kathy’s lunches with the president usually included her father and five or six carefully selected guests. The conference itself was seldom mentioned at these informal get-togethers. ‘In the main, it’s politics, friends, with everyone swapping amusing stories.’
At one of the many banquets at Yalta, Stalin gave a toast to Kathy. ‘He was on top form,’ she wrote. ‘A charming, gracious, almost benign host, something I never thought he could be. His toasts were sincere and most interesting. More than the usual banalities.’
Averell told Kathy that she should also make a toast, suggesting she address the Big Three wartime leaders.
‘Gee I was scared,’ she later recalled. She kept it short, toasting Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt, as well as all who had helped make the Yalta Conference such a success.
As the war came to an end, Stalin gave Kathy two prize racehorses in recognition of her work in the Soviet Union: these were shipped back to America. Kathy herself returned shortly afterwards and would soon marry Stanley Mortimer, a wealthy American advertising executive with whom she had three children.
Kathy never spoke about her wartime years in the Soviet Union, but she must have been quietly proud of what she had achieved, for she carefully pasted all her photos and press cuttings into bound scrapbooks.
Clementine Churchill had read a number of Kathy’s wartime letters and found them thoroughly entertaining. ‘I think your letters will make a wonderful book one day – not, however, to be published just now!’
But Kathy scorned those who cashed in on their wartime experiences. ‘As peace returned, many underlings of the war leaders sprang into print. I felt they abused their wartime privilege (& luck) of being on hand as history was made & swore I’d not do likewise.’
She wrapped her letters into neat little bundles, tied them up with ribbon, and stored them in a cupboard. They remained there for decades, and it was not until her son, David, was sorting through her paperwork shortly before she died, that he noticed a box containing two large brown scrapbooks. Inside was a collection of letters, photographs and newspaper cuttings, the products of a career that her family knew next to nothing about.
‘Hey, Mom, what is this about?’ asked David on discovering the papers. ‘Oh, that,’ said Kathy, before changing the subject. Since her mind was beginning to fade, David let the matter drop. But when he looked through the letters and read the press cuttings, he discovered a compelling and unknown chapter of his mother’s life. To his astonishment, he realised that she had known both Churchill and Stalin.
In 2023 David gave the originals of Kathy’s letters to the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, thereby preserving them in perpetuity and also making them available to a wider public.