Sexing up American history

This lovely little bluffers’ guide to the founders of the American Republic came out of a chat Gore Vidal had in 1961 with his old friend, John F. Kennedy. There they were, Jack, Bobby and Gore, lounging around the Kennedy holiday compound in Hyannis Port after a vigorous game of backgammon — Gore won.

Jack — ‘dear Jack’ — and Gore fell into conversation, although it was less of a conversation than a question-and-answer session. Need you ask who was doing the questioning and who was giving the answers? The President of the United States was the pupil, Vidal his master. What the pupil wanted to know is why he was surrounded by second-raters while, in 18th-century America, a tiny backwoods country with only three million people, there were all these great geniuses, like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the first American ambassador to London and its second president.