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  Western star: Eartha Kitt

Imagine a meeting between the two. One is Eartha Kitt, the sexiest black cabaret star in the Western world, renowned for her husky voiced rendering of C'est si bon and the enduring Christmas novelty smash hit, Santa Baby. The other is Lady Edwina Mountbatten, a wealthy English aristocrat married to Lord Mountbatten, who had been the last viceroy of India.

In 1950s' Paris, filmmaker Orson Welles, one of many white men who had slept with Eartha, had hailed the singer, actress and dancer as 'the most exciting woman in the world'. And when it came to sex, the Mountbattens had a remarkably open relationship too. Lord Mountbatten apparently swung both ways. He doted on his wife but that did not stop him from having the odd homosexual fling.

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  The book on Kitt

Nor did he mind too much if Lady Mountbatten, a woman with a healthy sexual appetite, sought diversions outside marriage which she did — often. Upper-class England was like that.

The year is 1957, a decade on from the transfer of power. Eartha has basically invited herself round for dinner with Jawaharlal Nehru at Teen Murti, the Indian Prime Minister's 'imposing' official residence in Delhi. She has taken the trouble to put on a 'gold silk-print Dior dress' for the occasion. She is ushered into an ante room.

The British author John L. Williams, whose well-received book — America's Mistress: The Life and Times of Eartha Kitt — was published in the UK last week by Quercus (£20) — takes up the story.

'After a considerable delay the doors opened,' the book notes. 'Two dogs entered followed by a middle-aged English lady. Eartha was all the more taken aback when the woman introduced herself as Lady Edwina Mountbatten.'

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  Its author, John L. Williams

That Edwina was apparently Nehru's 'mistress' must have been a 'revelation' to Eartha. 'All this while she [Eartha] had been seeking the respectability of a 'good marriage' to confirm her admission to high society... Perhaps she had had the wrong end of the stick. Perhaps, after all, there was no shame in being a mistress, if the man involved was rich or powerful enough.'

Eartha had had plenty of experience being a mistress. The moment she met Edwina, she apparently recognised a fellow mistress. In Eartha's mind, there was no doubt that Nehru and Edwina were very much a couple.

'They absolutely appeared to be,' emphasises Williams, in an interview with The Telegraph. 'They were as if man and wife, definitely,' he adds.

Over the last six decades historians have argued that the relationship between Nehru and Edwina had wider political ramifications. Some suggest that after Lord Mountbatten was sent to India in 1947 to preside over the transfer of power, he used Edwina as a sort of sweetener to persuade Nehru to be more co-operative.

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  IN HIGH PLACES: Nehru with Edwina Mountbatten

However, the Pakistani view is that India got the better of the deal during Partition because of Nehru's friendship with both 'Dickie and Edwina'.

What is not known — and possibly may never be known — is the extent of the intimacy between the two.

'Obviously no one knows what happened in the bedroom,' Williams acknowledges. 'But short of that there was no pretence that Edwina was just visiting Nehru by chance.'

Williams has described the Eartha-Edwina encounter in some detail in his book. While researching the biography, the author travelled to South Carolina in America's deep south where Eartha was born in 1927, the illegitimate daughter of a white doctor and his 16-year-old black maid. As a singing sensation from the 1950s onwards, Eartha was applauded by her legion of fans. T.S. Eliot sent her a bouquet of flowers. She went on a chat show with Yehudi Menuhin. And she took tea with Albert Einstein.

Orson Welles cast this 'tiny, curious, bitterly-smiling fascinating creature' as Helen of Troy in his abridgement of Doctor Faustus. In the White House of Lyndon B. Johnson, she had access to the President. She could count Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston and the Duke of Edinburgh among her friends or admirers.

Eartha, who died in 2008, had a string of white lovers but apart from a drug-addicted Korean War veteran called Bill McDonald, whom she divorced after four years, none would marry her.

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  Kitt with President Lyndon B. Johnson

Williams contrasts Eartha's reaction to being a mistress with that of Edwina who 'really wasn't bothered by what people thought'. Edwina, he writes, 'had quite a lot of affairs' — the most famous one being with the exceptionally well-endowed West Indian band leader (Leslie) Hutchinson. 'She gave 'Hutch' a jewelled penis from Cartier which is a fairly unambiguous kind of gift,' he writes.

Eartha, the book says, was an intelligent woman who took an interest in world affairs. During an extensive foreign trip that took her to Karachi, Delhi, Burma, Hong Kong and Hawaii, she asked the US embassy in Delhi to check whether Nehru would meet her. American diplomats were highly sceptical but word came back that Nehru would receive her. However, Williams reckons the positive reply owed more to Edwina who was an Eartha Kitt fan.

The dinner itself was a disappointment because Edwina hogged the conversation, preventing Eartha from engaging Nehru in a deep philosophical discourse. Also, Eartha, who was hoping for spicy Indian food, instead got insipid 'Chicken à la King'.

Eartha later explained that ever since she had been a child, she had retained a warm feeling for Mahatma Gandhi and 'I wanted to meet Nehru because I was looking for another Gandhi'.

Williams also discussed what being 'America's mistress' meant to Eartha when he appeared on BBC Radio 4's flagship Woman's Hour. Referring to the Edwina-Eartha encounter, presenter Jane Garvey tossed Williams an easy full toss: 'That's a great story — remind us who Nehru's partner was at the time!'

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  Kitt with Orson Welles

Williams told the BBC what he would also tell The Telegraph: 'Well, that was the surprise — Eartha had been quite stung by the way certain boyfriends would not marry her but would be only prepared to have her as a mistress. She goes to meet Nehru and she is greeted by Lady Mountbatten who had been Nehru's long-term mistress, so at that point she realised that there was one law for the super elite and another for the rest of us.'