In The Kennedys Amidst the Gathering Storm, Will Swift presents a fresh, empathetic interpre­tation of the ambassadorship of Joseph Kennedy and explores the intricate, often shifting relation­ships among Kennedy, Chamberlain, Churchill, and, of course, Roosevelt.

Arriving in London in early 1938, the Irish-Catholic Kennedys were welcomed by politicians, aristocrats, and intellectuals, all eager to court America. They finally appeared to have overcome their lifelong status as outsiders. From 1938 to 1940, the Kennedys crystallized their identity as protagonists on the world stage, making public the competitive and clannish intrafamily dynamics that would fuel their mythic rise to power. They all learned from their father's successes—and failures. The older children—Joe Jr., Jack, and Kathleen—took an active part in England's glittering, "last fling before the bombs fall" society, but all nine children charmed, their every move chronicled by the British and American media. John F. Kennedy's path to the White House began in London. As his father's political fortunes dimmed, Jack published a best-selling book and his star rose.

Drawing on recently released Kennedy family archives, Joseph P. Kennedy's private papers, and using rare photographs of English society and the photogenic Kennedy clan, Dr. Swift, with penetrating psychological insight, brings to life this fascinating family during a dramatic one thousand day period.

"Clinical psychologist and historian Swift (The Roosevelts and the Royals) capably documents Joseph P. Kennedy's troubled tenure as American minister to the Court of St. James's, and the experiences of his family during these years, aiming to present a 'fair and comprehensive' portrait of a man he says has been caricatured by other historians. But Kennedy's flaws still appear to outweigh his virtues. He proved a problem to FDR almost immediately, casting his lot with such British appeasers as Neville Chamberlain, Nancy Astor and others of the so-called Cliveden set. This earned him the enmity of Winston Churchill and criticism from such administration figures as Henry Morgenthau Jr., Cordell Hull and FDR himself, who had to regularly remind Kennedy that his role was to implement, not define, United States policy. Kennedy lasted just over two years, during which his second eldest son, Jack, became a bestselling author with Why England Slept. Eldest son Joe Jr. toured war-torn Spain and wrote articles in support of Franco's Fascist forces. And daughter Kathleen ('Kick') became immersed in aristocratic British nightlife, meeting Billy Cavendish — the marquess of Hartington and a Protestant — to whom she would eventually be married, to her Catholic mother's horror. All this Swift narrates with grace and style. Illus. and photos." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"When Joseph P. Kennedy became ambassador to Britain in February 1938, a friend told him he was heading for disaster. 'The job of Ambassador to London ... needs skills brought by years of training. And that, Joe, you simply don't possess. ... If you don't realize that soon enough, you're going to be hurt as you were never hurt in your life.'

Kennedy, who had lobbied President Franklin... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) D. Roosevelt for the job, paid no attention to what turned out to be a remarkably prescient warning. The former Wall Street speculator, whom Roosevelt had appointed in 1934 as first head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, was 'hell-bent on becoming the ambassador,' writes Will Swift in 'The Kennedys Amidst the Gathering Storm.' 'Then, he believed, all of London's social doors — often closed to the Irish — would open for him and his wife, Rose.'

Casting his book as a revisionist view of Kennedy, Swift aims to erase some of the tarnish from the ambassador's image as a defeatist and appeaser and to establish him as a more substantial, sympathetic figure than the one portrayed by most historians and Kennedy biographers. The trouble is, Swift offers considerably more evidence to back up the earlier view of Kennedy than he does to support his own.

Although Kennedy sought the London post in large part to enhance his social status and had no experience in diplomacy or firsthand knowledge of Britain or the rest of Europe, he saw himself, in Swift's words, as 'Roosevelt's premier delegate not just to Britain but the world.' Blinkered by his background as a businessman, he viewed Hitler's threat to Europe almost entirely in economic terms, believing, as James Reston of the New York Times put it, that 'wars were bad for business, and what was worse, for his business.'

Upon his arrival in Britain, Kennedy allied himself with the appeasement policies of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, himself a former businessman. Unsanctioned by the Roosevelt administration, the American envoy embarked on what Swift aptly terms 'rogue diplomacy': freelance negotiations with the German ambassador to London and other Reich officials in a vain attempt to accommodate Hitler. After the German occupation of much of Czechoslovakia in October 1938, the ambassador told a London audience that democracies and dictatorships must learn to get along, declaring that 'there is simply no sense ... in letting these differences grow into unrelenting antagonisms.' Like a number of other foot-in-mouth remarks he made during his 2 1/2 years in Britain, these comments caused a major international uproar and considerable heartburn for Roosevelt, who, while trying to walk a tightrope of neutrality, opposed Hitler's policy of aggression.

Although the attempt to rehabilitate Kennedy as ambassador fails to persuade, Swift, a clinical psychologist, does an admirable job of depicting Kennedy the man, an Irish Catholic outsider who spent most of his life trying to 'defuse his profound sense of being a second-class citizen' by seeking acceptance from the WASP establishment.

His appointment to the Court of St. James' was the pinnacle of his social ambitions, and he and his wife, who remind one of characters in a Trollope novel, gloried in invitations to Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle and to the Mayfair and Belgravia mansions of Britain's aristocratic elite. Kennedy hired press agents to stir up British media interest in himself and his photogenic family; his daughters, accompanied by their mother, were presented at court.

The Kennedys' dazzling social success in London, however, lasted little more than a year. When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Rose and the children were sent home, and Kennedy, who predicted the death of Britain as a democracy, found himself increasingly an outcast. The invitations dried up, King George VI condemned Kennedy's defeatist views in his diary, scornful government officials kept their distance, and the British press reviled him. When Winston Churchill, who detested Kennedy, became prime minister in May 1940, he and Roosevelt bypassed the ambassador by communicating directly with each other. Kennedy, feeling 'once again like an aggrieved outsider,' returned home for good in October 1940, declaring that 'England is gone' and 'I'm for appeasement one thousand per cent.' With his reputation indelibly stained, he never held another government position.

Kennedy's political downfall, Swift argues, was a blessing in disguise for his three younger sons — John F., Robert and Edward — who, while remaining close to their father, were able to learn from his mistakes as well as carve out their own identities. 'It is possible,' Swift writes, 'that they would never have blossomed as they did if, like Franklin Roosevelt's children, they had been overshadowed by an unquestionably powerful man.' A case in point: In college, John F. Kennedy wholeheartedly embraced the isolationist, pro-appeasement views of his father. Twenty years later, as president of the United States, he was an unequivocal internationalist, following in the footsteps of the man who had replaced Joseph P. Kennedy as his role model: Winston Churchill."

Reviewed by Lynne Olson, a former Washington correspondent for the Baltimore Sun and Associated Press and the author of 'Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England', Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Having previously assessed Joseph P. Kennedy (1888-1969) in his The Roosevelts and the Royals as "an opportunistic thorn in the president's side" during his 1000-day ambassadorship in Britain on the eve of World War II, the author now believes Kennedy deserves a more balanced assessment regarding his time in the US Embassy in London. Kennedy still doesn't emerge as a very positive figure, and among the substantial, even tragic flaws the narrative ascribes to him are a failure to see the implications of Nazi ideology, and overemphasis on an economic view of international relations, a failure to acknowledge the importance of maintaining a balance of power in European politics, an inability to recognize "the intangible aspects of spirit that would allow Britain and democracy to triumph in war," a tendency to confuse his own point of view with that of the United States, and a propensity for reckless behavior in both his professional and personal life. In addition to assessing Joseph Kennedy's ambassadorship, the book also explores the effect of the Kennedys' European sojourn on the lives and later political careers of the Kennedy children, especially John F. Kennedy. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Swift presents a fresh interpretation of the ambassadorship of Joseph Kennedy and explores the intricate, often shifting relationships among Kennedy, Chamberlain, Churchill, and Roosevelt. Two 8-page b&w photo inserts.

Will Swift, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist, who has been writing about American leaders and British royalty of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for more than twenty years. He is the author of The Roosevelts and the Royals, which Blanche Wiesen Cook called "a splendid addition to our understanding of the extraordinary Anglo-American partnership," and which Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., called "an excellent book." Will Swift lives in New York City and at the Nathan Wild House in Valatie, New York.