Harriet Cullen talks to Simon Heffer

Writer Harriet Cullen talks about her portrait of her mother, Pamela Berry, the wife of a newspaper owner who became the most famous political and press hostess of her generation and used her beauty and wit to influence successive governments.

Berry was the daughter of politician and lawyer F E Smith and married Michael Berry, son of William Berry, owner of national newspapers including the Daily Telegraph. Cullen explains how her mother was both a bystander and a protagonist during 50 years of British history. She was accused of wielding ‘petticoat power’ during the Suez Crisis, had a ten-year affair with Malcolm Muggeridge and became a big promoter of British fashion.

‘This book is more than a rich and searching portrait of a mother, it is a vivid piece of social history.’ Lady Antonia Fraser

Cullen is a freelance writer, contributor to History Today, the Daily Telegraph and the Keats-Shelley Review and a former chair of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association. Here she talks to veteran Daily Telegraph journalist Simon Heffer.