Kathleen Kennedy and her elder brother JFK were the grandchildren of upwardly mobile Irish Catholic immigrants. John F. Fitzgerald, ‘Honey Fitz’, became mayor of Boston, and Patrick J. Kennedy was a saloon-keeper and failed senatorial candidate who sent his sons to Harvard. ‘Kick’ was the fourth child, nicknamed for her ebullient personality, but born just as her mother, Rose, was thinking of leaving her serially unfaithful husband, Joe Kennedy Snr, who made his huge fortune from Hollywood studios and booze. Kick spent her early years schooled at, and confined to, convents, except when the whole family escaped to Hyannis Port or Palm Beach.
So when her father managed to wangle the post of Ambassador to the Court of St James from President Roosevelt in 1938, moving his nine children to London, Kick felt liberated. Thanks to her social-climbing parents and her own charm, she was taken into the bosom of the British aristocracy.
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