classical tragedy

Possibly, as in a classical tragedy, the piece has no villain. The whole affair was certainly avoidable. The Kennedys emerge from the fray with their least desirable side, an obsession with control and manipulation, facing to the light. Obviously they considered this book to be theirs to print if. as and when they saw fit. Manchester. on the other hand, held his to be an independent professional assignment—without financial assistance from the Kennedys —and treated it as such.

The Kennedys' motives behind this inspired piece of mishandling were two-pronged. First, there was Mrs. Kennedy, who located in the grisly work certain heartfelt confidences she released to Manchester as background material in the disturbing months after the assassination. Such passages, presumably, are not of such historical relevance that we cannot do without them.

Senator Robert Kennedy hinted, by his off-centre involvement in the affair, at a second more interesting purpose for the intervention.

The book, so the inside-dopesters disclosed, contains hair-curling descriptions of the insensitive department of Lyndon Johnson in the confusion after the events in Dallas, including his rather unseemly alacrity in taking the Presidential mantle upon himself on the return flight to Washington.

Robert Kennedy followed his initial reaction of wanting such vivid descriptions kept within the camp. The more commendable course of action here would have been to issue a forthright dissent from these passages in the book when it appeared, and a strong assertion of his own position in the matter. However, that chance is now lost for ever, and the open eruption of what resembles a dynastic feud is still on the cards.