Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter (41 page)

If these three are the people to whom my debt is greatest, there are others without whose help the research for this story would have been impossible. Most important among them were Kick’s sisters-in-law Anne Tree and Elizabeth Cavendish, both of whom were endlessly generous and helped me in innumerable ways to understand not only Kick, but also the dynamics of the Cavendish family. Lord Holderness, the inspirational war hero who became not merely one of Kick’s most trusted friends and confidants, but who very clearly loved her until the day he died, spoke to me of her with a frankness, thoughtfulness, and extreme care that made me understand aspects of Kick I might otherwise never have been able to grasp. Fiona Arran was revelatory about both Billy and Kick, and about Kick’s relationship to the strange new world in which she found herself.

Betty Coxe Spalding was not just Kick’s roommate in Washington and the one who came up with the plan for the Red Cross that finally allowed Kick to return to Billy—she also knew Kick at Hyannis before that, and along with her husband spent weekends of the Kennedy presidency with JFK and was privy to some of his most important thoughts about his sister, his parents, and the rest of the family. We had marathon talks over many months about Kick and the Kennedys, about Jack and the parents.

I also owe thanks to numerous other people who have talked to me about either Kick herself or other pivotal players in her story and the story of this world. Lord Carrington listened to my questions about Andrew and gave me answers that proved invaluable as I attempted to understand this very complicated man. Lady Soames, Debo’s cousin, shared her fascinating perspective on Debo, and also provoked from Debo herself some utterly unexpected comments. Lord Salisbury and Hugh Cecil talked to me about the Cecil family during my research on the Churchill book. I also wish to thank Andrew Parker Bowles, who was Billy’s godson; Lady Kennard; and Sir Nicholas Henderson.

Through the years, so many people have talked to me about the Kennedy family and its various members as I wrote books about or involving them that there are far too many names to list, but I am grateful to them all. I would also like to express my gratitude to all of the archivists and librarians who facilitated my research in Boston, New York, Washington, London, Oxford, Derbyshire, and other locations: the National Archives at Kew; the Bodleian Library at Oxford; the British Library; Chatsworth; the JFK Library; the Library of Congress; the University of Reading; the FDR Library; Eton Library; Cambridge University Library; the University of Rhode Island; the Sterling Library, Yale; and the Beinecke Library, Yale.

I want to thank Sally Richardson, Thomas Dunne, Peter Joseph, and Melanie Fried at St. Martin’s Press. And at the Helen Brann Agency, I would like to express my gratitude to my agent, Helen Brann, and to her assistant, Carol White.

It is beyond my capacity to even begin to express how great my debt is to my husband, David Packman. This book and my life have been enriched by him in ways that I can never begin to explain or thank him for properly.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Barbara Leaming
is the author of three
New York Times
bestsellers, including her most recent book,
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis
. Leaming’s previous book,
Churchill Defiant,
received the Emery Reves Award from the International Churchill Centre. Her groundbreaking biography of America’s thirty-fifth president,
Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman,
was the first to detail the lifelong influence of British history and culture and especially of Winston Churchill on JFK. Her articles have appeared in
The New York Times Magazine
,
Vanity Fair,
the
Times
of London, and other publications. She lives in Connecticut. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Source Notes

Index

Also by Barbara Leaming

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

KICK KENNEDY: THE CHARMED LIFE AND TRAGIC DEATH OF THE FAVORITE KENNEDY DAUGHTER.
Copyright © 2016 by Barbara Leaming. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.stmartins.com

Cover design by Olga Grlic

Cover photograph © Bettmann/CORBIS

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-1-250-07131-6 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4668-8243-0 (e-book)

e-ISBN 9781466882430

Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at
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First Edition: April 2016