WOMEN OF THE WHITE HOUSE

“A WOMAN’S public role is to sit beside her husband, be silent and be sure her hat is on straight,” former US first lady Bess Truman once said. But there was another side to Bess, wife of Harry S Truman.

Behind the scenes she was nicknamed The Boss and wrote many of her husband’s speeches during his White House years between 1945 and 1953. Anecdotes like this run through Every Eye is Upon Me, a new exhibition of first-lady portraits at