Ancient, Celtic, British and World Coins, Tokens, Coin Weights and Historical Medals

Royal counties and hackney horse society, children’s riding classes, silver prize medal by Mappin & Webb, 1934, 38mm; International Horse Show, Olympia, bronze prize medal by Mappin & Webb, 1931, both to the Hon. Pamela Digby, in cases of issue.Virtually mint state (£30-40)

Pamela Harriman (née Digby) was born in March 1920, the eldest of four children born to Edward Digby, who succeeded as the 11th Lord Digby. She was brought up at Minterne Magna, the family home in Dorset, where she shared her father’s passion for horses and herself became an excellent horsewoman. Her first marriage, in 1939, to Randolph Churchill was a disaster but, nevertheless, in October 1940 produced a son called Winston (now a Conservative M.P.) in recognition of her close relationship with her parents-in-law, Winston and Clementine Churchill. Divorced in 1946, Pamela pursued the rich and powerful of European society but signally failed to find a new husband with the fortune considered necessary for her needs. In 1962 she finally married again, to the American producer Leland Hayward, who once proudly described her as “the greatest courtesan of the century”. When Leland died in 1971, Pamela wasted no time in seeking a replacement, this time in the form of Averell Harriman, an old flame of hers recently widowed and one of the richest men in America. Now an American citizen, Pamela Harriman became a pillar of the Democratic Party in Washington and, in 1992, President Clinton appointed her the American ambassador in Paris, where she excelled in cementing American-French relationships. She died in February 1997 aged 76.