The Kennedys [antikvár]

PROLOGUE: APRIL 1938 IT was a momentary plateau in Europe's long slide toward war. Hitler had absorbed Austria and was eyeing Czechoslovakia. Roosevelt, having abandoned any hope of convening a peace conference in Washington, was looking for a coherent policy. British Prime Minister Chamberlain had suffered setbacks in his appeasement strategy, but continued to believe that rational men will agree to go along if the deal offered them is sweet enough. Joseph P. Kennedy was on his way to Windsor Castle to visit the King and Queen. It was less than a month since he had walked out of the embassy in top hat and cutaway, clhnbed into the ornate ceremonial coach, and ridden to Buckingham Palace to present his credentials as the new American Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. In the intervening weeks he and his family had taken England by storm. His brashness even more than his truculent isolationism had made him the talk of the diplomatic community. His wife, Rose, had been taken up by London society, sweet revenge for someone who'd often felt the sting of being excluded by the proper Bostonians back home. And the nine winsome Kennedy children had been photographed and written about as if they were some remarkable, veiy American experiment in genetics. In one breathtaking move the Kennedys had become America's first family abroad. The invitation to spend a weekend with the King and Queen was final proof that they had indeed arrived. As their limousine pulled into Windsor Park, Joe aid Rose drank in the royal details like tourists. The park looked like a forest in some old English ballad; the castle itself had an intentional magnificence uimiatched by anything they'd ever seen I ; 1 . ¦ ¦'i M' ¦