A frank account of the tempestuous life of the American mother of Britain’s most important twentieth-century politician. Brooklyn-born Jennie Jerome married into the British aristocracy in 1874, after a three-day romance. She became Lady Randolph Churchill, wife of a maverick politician and mother of the most famous British statesman of the century. Jennie Churchill was not merely the most talked about and controversial American woman in London society, she was a dynamic behind-the-scenes political force and a woman of sexual fearlessness at a time when women were not supposed to be sexually liberated. A concert pianist, magazine founder and editor, and playwright, she was also, above all, a devoted mother to Winston. In American Jennie , Anne Sebba draws on newly discovered personal correspondences and archives to examine the unusually powerful mutual infatuation between Jennie and her son and to relate the passionate and ultimately tragic career of the woman whom Winston described as having “the wine of life in her veins.” Anne Sebba is a biographer, journalist, lecturer, and author of six books, including the best-selling Mother Teresa: Beyond the Image and Laura Ashley: A Life by Design. She lives in London. The mother of the greatest Englishman of them all, Winston Churchill, was actually an American, born Jennie Jerome into a wealthy New York family. In joining the second son of the Duke of Marlborough in matrimony, she was part of a swarm of American heiresses who, in the late nineteenth century, married into the European aristocracy. But Jennie Churchill was not just another anything. As brought to brilliant light in this responsible, respectful biography, she was her own person, an original who injected into the distinguished Churchill family a great deal of new energy. It would have been easy for her to live through her husband and son, but Jennie created a life for herself and achieved almost legendary status in British society, even becoming a good friend (and perhaps lover) of the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII. She ultimately had three husbands and even tried her hand at magazine editing, but no matter what she set out to do, she chose her own path. The person and her times will prove fascinating to a wide readership. Hooper, Brad "What a woman, what a life, what a book." Sue Arnold, The Guardian (audiobook review)"