Volume 27, Number 3 · March 6, 1980
In the Shadow
By Rosemary Dinnage
Clementine Churchill: The Biography of a Marriage
by Mary Soames
Houghton Mifflin, 732 pp., $16.95
A member of the women's forces told Mary Soames how she used to look down from her office window in wartime, often after a night of heavy bombing, and see the prime minister's wife, immaculately dressed, going for a walk alone in the park behind Downing Street. The story gives us a glimpse of the isolation that attended this handsome, shrewd, hardworking woman, happy in her marriage, surrounded with people and tasks and her children. Behind her façade of cool poise and her unfailing conscientiousness, says her daughter, she was both shy and passionate, and few people were allowed to get near her. Being the support and confidant of a public man at times only emphasized the isolation.
Review, 2335 words
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