HistoryExtrahttps://www.historyextra.comHome of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast2026-05-02T13:15:59.000Zhourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00Pageantry and politics: a history of British royal visits to the UShttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/pageantry-politics-history-british-royal-visits-us/2026-04-27T01:10:19.000ZThe April 2026 royal visit to the United States came at a particularly challenging moment for the US-UK ‘special relationship’. In the preceding months, President Donald Trump had repeatedly singled out prime minister Keir Starmer for blunt criticism, even going so far as to declare that Starmer as “no Churchill”. Meanwhile, the royal family similarly found itself caught up in transatlantic controversy: the Epstein scandal.
If all that wasn’t challenging enough, King Charles’s visit to America also came at a time when the US-UK relationship was drawing even more scrutiny than usual. 2026 is year is the 80th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, which popularised the phrase ‘special relationship’, and it’s also the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. The latter was of course the event that severed the connection between the American colonies and the British Crown and thereby put the transatlantic relationship onto a very different trajectory.
In short, the visit came at a time of significant turbulence in the US-UK relationship. King Charles, however, might have been able to take some reassurance from the fact that several of his predecessors had similarly travelled to the United States during moments of challenge, change and upheaval...
1860: The first royal visit
The very first visit to the United States by a British royal came in 1860 and involved Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales. Its origins lay in an invitation received by Queen Victoria from Canadian leaders keen that she see for herself “the progress and prosperity of this distant part of your dominions”. Citing duty, the queen declined. But she despatched her eldest son in her place.
When President James Buchanan got wind of the situation, he then saw an opportunity and so extended an invitation for the prince to journey south of the border. The royal household happily accepted, and the man destined to become Edward VII thereby became the first British royal to visit the United States. Conscious of diplomatic protocol, his visit to the US was billed as ‘private’, and so he travelled under one of his many other titles, Lord Baron Renfrew.
The prince landed in Canada in July 1860 and spent two months touring, during which he was frequently greeted by cheering crowds. No one was quite sure, though, how he would be received when he crossed the border into the United States. After all, it was only just over 40 years prior that British soldiers had marched on Washington and burned down the White House. Still more recently, in the 1840s, the relationship between Britain and its former colonies had again been fraught, this time due to American designs on the Pacific Northwest.
There was no need to worry, however, as just like in Canada the prince received a rapturous welcome. Travelling unofficially as ‘Renfrew’, he was met in Washington by President Buchanan and spent some time touring the capital. But the most celebrated moment came a few miles away, at Mount Vernon in Virginia. Here, Lord Renfrew laid a wreath at the tomb of George Washington, the man who had of course defeated his great grandfather, George III, all those years ago. It was a powerful gesture, and it has been something of a royal rite of passage ever since.
In 1970, for instance, the Prince of Wales – now King Charles III – laid his own wreath at Mount Vernon. Perhaps this month we will see his son, Prince William, do likewise.
1939: The storm clouds of war
The 1860 visit of ‘Lord Baron Renfrew’ occurred just as internal tensions in the United States were threatening to tear the country asunder. Within a couple of weeks of the prince’s departure, a new president – Abraham Lincoln – had been elected, while just a few months later war had broken out between North and South. The fighting would rage for the next four years, only ending in 1865.
Almost 80 years later, in the summer of 1939, another American tour by British royalty likewise unfolded amidst the gathering storm clouds of war, albeit this time in Europe rather than in the United States.
The 1939 visit by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth was a real landmark occasion: the first ever by a reigning British monarch. It came, moreover, at a particularly challenging moment for the royal family. Just three years earlier, in December 1936, Edward VIII abdicated the British throne. His decision provoked a constitutional crisis, but it also had ramifications for the US-UK relationship because it was at root a consequence of the king’s desire to marry an American divorcée, Wallis Simpson. The 1939 visit was thus a chance for the British royal family to shift the narrative. Equally important, it also provided an invaluable opportunity to strengthen transatlantic ties just as the Nazi threat in Europe intensified.
The visit unfolded in June and was keenly supported by the US president, Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR). Like Lord Baron Renfrew’s visit in 1860, the royal tour took in a number of famous American landmarks, including Mount Vernon, where the British monarch followed the example set by his grandfather and laid a wreath at the tomb of George Washington.
Other significant episodes included a visit to the New York World’s Fair, a tour of the Capitol, and another wreath-laying, this time at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. Perhaps most famous of all, however, was the king and queen’s meeting with FDR at his Hyde Park home. To the delight of the American press, the king was seen enjoying typical American picnic fare: hot dogs!
By all accounts, the 1939 royal visit was a success. One American observer later wrote that “Their Majesties’ hundred hours in the United States had given rise to an enthusiasm without parallel in American history”. Later, one US newspaper even declared that because of the King’s visit “the old bond between the democracies has taken on higher, warmer, yes friendlier qualities than it ever had before”.
1957: The new Elizabethan era
Despite the success of the 1939 visit, the Americans did not immediately commit themselves to the British cause when war broke out in Europe later that year. But once the United States had entered the war (in December 1941) an alliance of unprecedented closeness was indeed forged. For the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, this was the beginning of what he would call the “special relationship”, a transatlantic partnership built on shared history, culture, values, and sacrifice. Nonetheless, for all its undoubted closeness the special relationship was frequently tested during the Cold War, most famously during the Suez Crisis of late 1956.
The crisis was precipitated by the decision of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser to seize the Suez Canal zone, a vital trade route. In response, the British and French (with Israeli support) launched a military operation to regain control, but they did so without first securing American approval. Their actions quickly met with vigorous criticism from Washington, with President Eisenhower demanding an immediate Anglo-French withdrawal on pain of severe economic sanctions. Chastened, the British withdrew their forces, and with his credibility damaged beyond repair, prime minister Anthony Eden duly resigned, albeit citing ill health.
- Read more | How significant was the Suez Crisis?
Among the first key tasks of the new government of prime minister Harold Macmillan was therefore to restore trust with Washington. Fortunately ‘Super Mac’, as he was known, was very well-placed to do so – he knew President Eisenhower from their service together during the Second World War, while his ties to ‘Ike’s’ successor, President John F Kennedy, were even closer: he was uncle-in-law to JFK’s younger sister Kathleen ‘Kick’ Kennedy (tragically killed in a plane crash in 1948). These close ties would certainly pay dividends, but when it came to rebuilding the special relationship Macmillan also had a trump card to play – royalty. The chance to play it finally came a year after the Suez crisis, in October 1957.
Crowned in 1953 in a televised ceremony watched on both sides of the Atlantic, Queen Elizabeth II was eminently suited for the job of mending the special relationship, so recently strained by Suez. After all, she and the president were well-acquainted from the war years, and she was also already familiar with America. She had first visited – while still a princess – in 1951, during which visit she met with Eisenhower’s predecessor, President Harry Truman. The Queen was also very aware of the diplomatic impact of her parents’ visit in 1939. In short, this was one monarch ready and able to meet the challenge of the moment.
The extent to which the 1957 state visit represented a clear attempt to restore the special relationship is quickly apparent in the itinerary. This was full of evocative symbolism and included a visit to Jamestown – to mark the 350th anniversary of English settlement – as well as a state dinner at the White House and a ticker-tape parade in New York City. It was a resounding success and was followed during her reign by no less than three more state visits to the United States. The second, in 1976, occurred during another testing moment in the transatlantic relationship.
1976: The bicentennial
The Queen’s 1976 state visit to the United States was purposefully timed so as to coincide with a major anniversary celebration – the bicentennial of the American Revolution. But like the visit of 1957 it also unfolded in the aftermath of significant transatlantic tensions, this time connected to the Vietnam War. The conflict in southeast Asia had dominated US foreign policy in the 1960s and early 1970s, and it also caused disagreements with European allies, including Britain. At the crux of the matter was the persistent refusal of the British government to send troops to fight alongside their American ally, a decision which drew pointed criticism from Washington. For both governments, the Queen’s 1976 state visit – which came at the invitation of President Gerald Ford – was thus an opportunity to reset the relationship after the recent disagreements.
Like her 1957 visit, the details were worked out with an eye on the symbolism. The itinerary saw the Queen attend various bicentennial-focused ceremonies, and she also hosted her own reception at the British embassy in Washington. One of those in attendance declared that this was “the best diplomatic reception since King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited in 1939”. But the highlight was a speech the Queen gave on her arrival at Philadelphia during which she expressed her “sincere gratitude” to “the Founding Fathers of this great republic for having taught Britain a very valuable lesson”. The Americans were delighted, with all differences – historic and recent – now happily forgotten.
2007: A fond farewell
The Queen’s fourth and final state visit to the US was in 2007, and like all its predecessors it occurred amidst geopolitical turmoil (it was the same with the third, in 1991, which came amidst the collapse of the Soviet Union and shortly after the Gulf War).
This time the turmoil was tied to the ongoing War on Terror, which had seen British forces again fight side by side with the American ally. But although this suggested that the special relationship was back on a sure footing elsewhere the picture was rather more complicated.
American unilateralism had in fact strained the transatlantic relationship, producing significant anti-war sentiment in Britain as well as vocal criticism of Washington from other European allies (especially the French). Frustrated by what they felt to be his slavish devotion to the Americans, some in the British press had even characterised the prime minister, Tony Blair, as President Bush’s ‘lapdog’.
Just as after both Suez and Vietnam, therefore, the 2007 state visit offered a chance to use pageantry and ceremony to repair some of the damage. This objective was again very apparent in the itinerary, which, in homage to the 1957 visit, included a trip to Jamestown, then marking the 400th anniversary of English settlement. Other stopovers, all of which were well-reported in the US press, included attendance at the Kentucky Derby (the Queen was well-known for her love of horse racing) as well as a formal state banquet at the White House.
It was the latter which also produced one of the trip’s most memorable moments: while giving a toast, President George W Bush had thanked the Queen for her role in the bicentennial celebrations, erroneously suggesting while doing so that this had occurred in 1776 (rather than 1976). The Queen raised her eyebrows in response, which in turn led the president to quip that she had given him “a look that only a mother could give a child”.
]]>Was JFK about to be re-elected? An expert weighs in on the president's lost second termhttps://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/would-jfk-have-won-second-term-presidency/2025-05-07T15:05:35.000ZOn 22 November 1963, President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. At the time of his death, Kennedy had served fewer than three years as president, but within US politics, he was a figure who already loomed large, his reputation forged by savvy political instincts, his carefully formulated image, and his demonstrable grit as a statesman during the escalations of the Cold War.
On that day in Dallas, it’s easy to suppose that Kennedy may have felt justifiably confident about the prospect of the 1964 election that loomed on the horizon.
But would the president truly have been re-elected in a landslide? What would a second term have looked like? And how might the USA – and the world – have changed if he had lived?
- On the podcast | JFK: the man behind the myths
“I think Kennedy […] would've beaten his opponent Barry Goldwater comfortably,” says historian Mark White, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “He averaged 70% approval ratings,” which was “the highest of any president in modern recorded history.”
A likely second term
Heading into the 1964 presidential electoral campaign, Kennedy remained hugely popular. In particular, his handling of international crises had bolstered his image as a steady foreign policy leader – a necessary thing in the burgeoning nuclear age.
Though his legislative progress domestically was widely perceived to be slower, his youthful energy and rhetorical appeal had galvanised much of the electorate, allowing them to be patient with the president’s initiatives.
In contrast, his likely Republican challenger, Barry Goldwater, was a hardline conservative senator from Arizona whose campaign would later mark a sharp rightward shift in Republican politics.
Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act, advocated for the use of tactical nuclear weapons, and promoted a minimal federal government – a platform that alienated many moderate voters (the kinds of voters that Richard Nixon had wooed in his hotly contested 1960 election battle against Kennedy, and would win over again in his successful 1968 campaign).
“[Goldwater] was seen as extreme,” White explains. “Kennedy wouldn’t have had to be particularly aggressive – Goldwater’s positions would have disqualified him in the minds of many voters.”
In reality, after Kennedy’s death, Lyndon B Johnson won the 1964 election in a landslide against Goldwater – taking 61% of the popular vote, and all but six states. But White is confident JFK would have enjoyed similar, if not greater, success.
“I think we can safely assume that John Kennedy would've been president till January 1969.”
A different path on Vietnam?
One of the most fervently debated questions surrounding Kennedy’s unfinished presidency is whether he would have escalated the Vietnam War – as Johnson did after 1964.
“I think it's most likely he would not have [furthered] the war in Vietnam,” White says. “He already had a fantastic reputation as a foreign policy president,” thanks to his successful diplomacy in handling the Cuban Missile Crisis. Unlike Johnson, White suggests, Kennedy “didn't really need to prove himself.”
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Crucially, White points to Kennedy’s growing caution when dealing with the military’s most aggressive advisers. “He became increasingly sceptical of the generals because he noticed they always gave him very hawkish advice,” he notes. “I think he would've been far more able than Johnson was […] to have rejected that advice.”
While Kennedy had increased US involvement in Vietnam during his first term, White believes his instincts were moving toward disengagement – or, at the very least, a more cautious path than the one Johnson ultimately took.
Domestic ambition – with limits
On the domestic front, Kennedy’s second term might have brought real – but more restrained – reform.
“He likely would have passed civil rights legislation, in my view,” White says, citing the bill that Kennedy introduced to end segregation in the South. “But I think he had a less radical conception of domestic reform than Lyndon Johnson.”
Johnson, Kennedy’s Vice President who succeeded the assassinated leader and sought to honour his legacy, launched the Great Society programme – a sweeping set of social reforms that included Medicare, Medicaid, and a historic expansion of federal anti-poverty initiatives. Kennedy, by contrast, was a more incrementalist politician.
The legacy that never was
What’s perhaps most fascinating about Kennedy’s lost second term is how it might have reshaped the longer arc of American politics.
“Would he have preserved the liberal consensus longer than Johnson was able to? That’s a really interesting question,” White reflects.
The 1960s marked a turning point in US political life. The liberal order built under Franklin D Roosevelt – one defined by broad federal powers and expansive social policy – began to fracture under the weight of war, unrest, and growing conservative backlash.
- Read more | Did Ronald Reagan 'Make America Great Again'?
Goldwater’s candidacy, though unsuccessful, laid the groundwork for the resurgence of Richard Nixon, the later rise of Ronald Reagan and the rightward tilt of American politics.
Ultimately, John F Kennedy’s time in office ended neither with a noble bowing out at the culmination of a second term, nor with political defeat, but with bloody violence.
Mark White is a professor of history at Queen Mary, University of London, and the author of Icon, Libertine, Leader (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024). He was speaking to Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast, listen to the full conversation
]]>“Risks he should never have taken”: a historian’s take on JFK’s sexual waywardnesshttps://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/jfk-president-kennedy-affairs-risk-who/2025-04-22T13:18:22.000ZJohn F Kennedy holds a prestigious position in the American imagination – a man of wartime heroism, soaring rhetoric and youthful charm who embodied postwar optimism. It’s an image made even more potent by his untimely death, killed in Dallas when he was 46 years old.
Yet behind Kennedy’s charismatic exterior lies a more troubling portrait: a president whose reckless extramarital affairs risked not only his marriage but also national security.
Historian Mark White spoke on the HistoryExtra podcast about grappling with conflicting pictures of Kennedy in his biography of the president, Icon, Libertine, Leader.
- On the podcast | JFK: the man behind the myths
While he credits Kennedy as a capable and, at times, transformational leader, in contrast, the president’s personal conduct was “like looking at the life of an early Roman emperor.”
His “sexual waywardness”, says White, was not a footnote but a defining feature of his private life – and it was carried out with breathtaking audacity.
Kennedy’s riskiest affairs
As historians in the 1970s and ‘80s sought to unpick the image of Kennedy as a president of impeccable character – an image shored up by JFK’s wife Jackie in the wake of his assassination in 1963 – a “slew of revelations” emerged.
“It became clear that he'd been a philanderer of spectacular proportions and had affairs with lots of people,” White explains. And it wasn’t just the volume of his affairs – it was Kennedy’s choices of companions that had dangerous implications.
One example is Judith Campbell, who from 1960 to 1962, was simultaneously seeing Kennedy and Sam Giancana, the head of the Chicago Mafia.
Such a close connection to a significant criminal outfit is “obviously a real concern,” says White, calling the Campbell affair “a major misjudgement on his part.”
Another of Kennedy’s affairs, with a woman called Ellen Rometsch in 1963, also courted huge risk.
Rometsch was a model seemingly from West Germany, who was married to a West German air force sergeant. In a twist that could be lifted from a Cold War-era spy novel, says White, “what Kennedy didn’t know when he was sleeping with her was that she was originally from communist East Germany.”
“She wasn’t a spy, but she could have been,” White notes, “and sexual compromise blackmail is a standard espionage technique.” Speculation has swirled in the decades since about Rometsch’s motives.
The most famous example of Kennedy’s extra-marital affairs is a romance with the Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe, says White. “Some biographies disagree on this in terms of timing and so on, but it seems pretty clear he had an affair with her.” Given the profile of Monroe in ’60s America, Kennedy’s attitude seems brazen.
These episodes have to be considered as more than salacious anecdotes, says White, acknowledging how they expose Kennedy’s casual willingness to take risks that could have compromised national security. They also, he says, raise serious ethical questions.
“You could make the argument that this is a presidential private life, we should just be concerned about his policies,” says White. “But I think one does have to consider it. His presidency wasn't damaged. But those were risks he should never have taken.”
How has history regarded Kennedy’s philandering?
Many historians and biographers have struggled with how to square Kennedy’s personal flaws with his political legacy, says White.
Tracing the generational shift in scholarship, he highlights the early “Camelot School”, which lionised Kennedy, bolstered by Jackie Kennedy’s savvy comparison of her husband to King Arthur in the week after his assassination. “It was deliberate and strategic,” says White. “The implication was that JFK had been so great as a president, it was appropriate to think of him in mythical terms.”
But by the 1970s and ’80s, revelations of Kennedy’s private behaviour and the disaster of the Vietnam War had shattered the Camelot illusion. “A whole slew of revelations emerged,” influencing a new school of thought “which I call the ‘Counter-Camelot’,” White explains.
These revisionists – including Seymour Hersh and Thomas Reeves – branded Kennedy as a reckless Cold Warrior with a dangerously flawed character.
Reeves, one of the harshest critics, argued that “the foundation of all exceptional leadership is a strong sense of character... and JFK just didn’t have that.”
Did Kennedy’s affairs affect his leadership?
White does agree that Kennedy’s character in private life was “extraordinary” in its recklessness, but insists that defining him solely by his sexual behaviour is reductive.
“Character is a complex thing, comprising a multiplicity of traits,” he counters. “When you look at Kennedy in the round, you also can see that he was courageous... he had the capacity to change and grow.”
White credits Kennedy with a significant evolution during his presidency – from a stance as a Cold War ‘hawk’ to a more cautious statesman.
The Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, White argues, profoundly changed him, instilling a sobering awareness of nuclear brinkmanship. In civil rights, too, Kennedy grew: “He was sickened by what he'd seen” in Birmingham, Alabama in the fight to end racial segregation, and delivered “the great speech of his life” on civil rights in June 1963, introducing legislation that would later become the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
It's also of note that, in the context of the modern presidency, the behaviour isn't unique, White says. “We know Warren Harding had affairs. Franklin Roosevelt had affairs. Dwight Eisenhower, prior to his presidency; Lyndon Johnson, a lot of affairs. George Bush Senior. Bill Clinton, certainly.”
“They can’t get me while I’m alive”
Why have the private affairs of many other presidents not attracted the same levels of attention? White speculates that “people are more drawn to that side of JFK's behaviour because of his perceived glamour.”
But none of this negates the astonishing double life that JFK maintained. While crafting a sophisticated image of a devoted family man – complete with glamorous First Lady and his children regularly featuring in press photographs – Kennedy conducted affairs even within the White House itself.
“There were at least four women in the White House – administrators, secretaries – that he was sleeping with throughout his time there,” White reveals.
This duplicity was enabled by the media culture of the time. Kennedy “understood that responsible journalists didn’t report on politicians’ private lives,” says White. “He wasn’t taking a political risk, for instance, in the same way that Bill Clinton was in the 1990s.”
Kennedy is said to have quipped something to the effect of: ‘They can’t get me while I’m alive, and when I’m dead, it’s not something I’m really bothered about.’
It's a remark that can be seen to show the recklessness with which Kennedy viewed his private actions. Yet, as White notes, “I don’t really think it has any impact on his presidency in terms of his policies.”
Indeed, says White, Kennedy’s political decision-making was remarkably cautious – at odds with the impulsiveness of his personal life. “If he’s that macho and reckless, why doesn’t he send in troops to overthrow Castro during the Bay of Pigs? Why didn’t he bomb Cuba during the Missile Crisis?”
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For White, the paradox of Kennedy is essential to understanding him. He was a leader of enormous symbolic power with a meticulously cultivated image, yet the image hid profound moral complexities.
“You can't understand why he's elected president without reference to that image,” he says. “Kennedy develops the most powerful, seductive, mesmerising image of any leader in a western democratic context.”
Mark White is a professor of history at Queen Mary, University of London, and the author of Icon, Libertine, Leader (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024). He was speaking to Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast, listen to the full conversation
]]>The JFK assassination attempt you’ve never heard ofhttps://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/jfk-assassination-attempt-richard-pavlick-why-failed/2025-02-10T09:55:35.000ZThe images of John F Kennedy losing his life to an assassin’s bullets in November 1963 are some of the most dramatic and iconic of the 20th century. Many have asked in the decades since the charismatic US president was killed in Dallas: what might have been if Lee Harvey Oswald had missed?
- Read more | What if JFK had lived?
But there is another compelling ‘what if’ question that very nearly became reality. How might history have looked if JFK hadn’t been president at all?
Years before his death, before he even took office, Kennedy narrowly escaped another attempt on his life. It’s a story so overshadowed by subsequent events that it has faded into near obscurity.
In their 2025 book The JFK Conspiracy, Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch explore a chilling episode which sheds light on a nation grappling with divisions and prejudice in the 1960s. They joined an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast to explain more.
- On the podcast | The forgotten JFK assassination plot
A forgotten assassination plot
On 11 December 1960, just weeks after his narrow election victory, President-elect John F Kennedy was on his way to church in Palm Beach, Florida, where he was staying while preparing for his inauguration. Unknown to Kennedy and his staff, a retired postal worker named Richard Pavlick waited nearby, in a car packed full of dynamite.
“He’s about 20 yards away from Kennedy across the street,” explains Brad Meltzer. “Pavlick knows Kennedy’s schedule – he goes to 10am church every Sunday. All Pavlick has to do is hit the gas, flip the switch, and boom goes the dynamite. And that would have been the death of Kennedy.”
But what motivated Pavlick, a World War I veteran from New Hampshire, to travel to Florida to try and kill Kennedy? He was, as Meltzer and Mensch detail in their book, consumed by anti-Catholic bigotry that was emblematic of the deeply divided USA at the time of Kennedy’s election in 1960.
“Kennedy wasn’t just dealing with political opponents,” says Mensch. “He was confronting entrenched prejudice. Catholicism in America at that time was linked to the waves of immigration in the early 20th century that had transformed the nation. People like Pavlick feared what they saw as an erosion of traditional Protestant values, and there was a lot of anger, a lot of rage on this issue.”
The climate of the 1960 election had heightened Pavlick’s rage. It had been a bitter campaign, with Kennedy facing both political and religious opposition. “Kennedy was only the second Catholic presidential candidate in US history,” Mensch notes, “and the first, Al Smith in 1928, had been soundly defeated largely because of his religion. For many, Kennedy represented a similar threat.”
Pavlick’s bigotry had long been documented. Years earlier, he had tried to start a Protestant-only veterans’ group that explicitly excluded Catholics and Jews.
Fuelled by this animosity and against a backdrop of wider prejudice, in late 1960, Pavlick loaded his car with explosives and began stalking Kennedy. His plan to assassinate the future president took him from New Hampshire to Kennedy’s family homes in Hyannis Port and Palm Beach.
Though, his actions appeared neither impulsive nor chaotic. Meltzer describes him as the embodiment of the type of potential killer that the Secret Service calls a “hunter”: “hunters make almost no noise, unlike ‘howlers,’ who shout threats without follow-through. Pavlick was quiet and methodical – a real danger.”
What saved JFK?
Pavlick’s obsession with Kennedy drove him to plot an explosive murder, but Meltzer explains that it was this same preoccupation that betrayed him. “He couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He started writing letters to people, almost telegraphing his intentions. That became his undoing.”
As the President-elect stepped out to attend church on 11 December 1960, Pavlick sat ready to detonate his car bomb. It’s no spoiler to say that Pavlick’s scheme did not come to pass – but what stopped him?
The final decision that foiled Pavlick’s plot is revealed in The JFK Conspiracy – a moment that Mensch reflects “is one of the great ironies of this story. Pavlick’s bigotry and hatred drove him to the brink of murder, but his narrow view of morality prevented the tragedy.”
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Why isn’t the assassination attempt better known?
“It was overshadowed by larger events,” Meltzer explains. “Right as the story was about to break nationally, a devastating plane crash over New York grabbed headlines.” On 16 December 1960, United Airlines Flight 826 and Trans World Airlines Flight 266 collided over New York City, killing a total of 134 people, including six people on the ground.
“And, of course, the tragedy in Dallas almost three years later all but erased this earlier attempt from the public memory.”
Kennedy’s own reaction to Pavlick’s attempt contributed to the story’s obscurity; Mensch notes that the President-elect “brushed it off. JFK had faced death many times, from World War II to his political career.
“That also might be a reason why the story got kind of lost, because Kennedy himself didn't take it very seriously.”
Meanwhile, the Secret Service took it much more seriously, recognising just how close Pavlick had come to succeeding.
For Meltzer and Mensch, the episode offers a stark parallel with modern political divides. “The country was deeply polarised in 1960,” Meltzer says. “Hatred and fear were weaponised, targeting Kennedy as someone who was different – an immigrant’s son, a Catholic, an outsider in the eyes of many.”
The 1960 election was “a moment where the country is so deeply divided. Each side hates the other side. Whatever side you're on, you think the other side are horrible, terrible people.
“Does that sound familiar to you?” asks Meltzer. “When you whip all that hatred up, you can't be surprised when you incite somebody out there. And it's the most dangerous thing about this game that's being played right now in the United States.”
Mensch adds: “I do think when you look at what's being sold to us by our politicians, and how we're being divided rather than united, and the benefits that come from doing such things, and what happens when you target groups of people and say that those people are the cause of your pain – that’s what makes this story so vital today.”
Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch were speaking to Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation
The JFK Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Kennedy, And Why It Failed by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch is published by Flatiron Books in the US and is out now, and will be released on 13 February 2025 in the UK, published by Ithaka
]]>The lost Kennedy: the tragic life of JFK’s sister Rosemaryhttps://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/rosemary-kennedy-jfk-sister-life-lobotomy-what-happened/2024-08-05T12:02:06.000ZThe sister of American president John F Kennedy and US senators Robert and Ted Kennedy, Rosemary Kennedy was born into one of 20th-century America’s most prominent political families. Presented to elite British society in the 1930s and deemed beautiful and charming by the press, the eldest Kennedy daughter would disappear from society at the age of 23, following a tragic decision taken by her father.
Rosemary Kennedy’s family
Joseph P Kennedy was an Irish-American millionaire and politician, who had been born into a New England political family and made his fortune in films, whisky and steel.
He and Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald – an intensely devout princess of Boston’s Catholic aristocracy – married in 1914 and had nine children.
What was the Kennedy curse?
The ‘Kennedy Curse’ refers to a tragic sequence of events that befell the Kennedy family – primarily the nine children of Joseph P Kennedy and Rose Kennedy – throughout the 20th century.
The couple’s eldest son, Joe Jr – who had been groomed since childhood by his father for the future presidency of the United States – was killed in action in 1944 while serving as a pilot during the Second World War.
Their fourth child, Kathleen, was also killed in a plane crash, while flying with her lover from Britain to the south of France in 1948.
The second Kennedy son, John F Kennedy, would take over Joe Jr’s political mantle and was elected as the 35th president of the United States in 1960; he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963.
In 1968, the couple’s seventh child, Robert ‘Bobby’ Kennedy, was shot during his own campaign to become president.
- Alternative history: What if JFK had lived?
Just a year later in 1969, their youngest son, Edward ‘Ted’ Kennedy, was involved in a car accident on the New England island of Chappaquiddick, which resulted in the death of a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne.
Though many of these incidents, and others, have been written about and analysed countless times since the middle of the century, fewer people might know about the fate of Rosemary Kennedy (1918–2005), the third child and eldest daughter of the Kennedys.
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Rosemary Kennedy’s birth: what happened?
Rosemary Kennedy was born on Friday 13 September 1918. At the time of her birth, the city of Brookline, Massachusetts, was in the grip of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic – which would kill between 20 and 50 million people worldwide – and so the doctor attending the birth was delayed with other patients.
During Rose Kennedy’s labour, although the baby’s head was already emerging, the midwife reportedly told Rose to keep her legs clamped together to prevent the birth until the doctor arrived. According to an account by Luella Hennessey-Donovan, the family’s devoted nursemaid and governess, Rose followed the instructions for two agonising hours.
As Rosemary grew, it became apparent that she had both behavioural and educational difficulties. Specialists later told the Kennedys that her developmental difficulties were due to oxygen deprivation suffered as a result of a “uterine accident”.
Rosemary Kennedy’s childhood and education
Her disabilities were often hidden or disguised by her family to avoid the stigma of being associated with ‘defective genes’.
Despite her attendance at more than a dozen special schools in the United States and Britain, Rosemary struggled with reading and writing well into adulthood.
Seemingly the happiest period of Rosemary’s life was spent in England, in the years preceding the Second World War. After her father, Joseph, was appointed ambassador to the UK by President Franklin D Roosevelt in 1938, the Kennedy family relocated to England.
The beauty and charm of the teenage Rosemary and her younger sister Kathleen attracted the attention of the British press, and did much to help the new ambassador “walk right into the circle of British interests”, as one newspaper of the time put it.
In May 1938, Rosemary and Kathleen were presented to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace.
The 19-year-old Rosemary was deemed to be exquisite: the newspapers plastered photographs of her all over their front pages. The Evening Standard swooned over “Miss Rosemary Kennedy... in her picture dress of white and tulle embroidered with silver”.
When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Rose Kennedy and most of her children hurried back to the United States; only Rosemary stayed behind with her father. When the Blitz began, she was sent out of London to Belmont House, a Montessori school in the country [the Montessori Method focuses on all five senses to develop a child’s learning].
By the time she arrived at Belmont, the press’s fascination with Rosemary had taken its toll. Photographs of the time show her father grasping her arm tightly during the rounds of public appearances, which were often marred by stumbles and blunders. The school offered a refuge from the glare of publicity, and Rosemary pronounced it “the most wonderfulest place I’ve been to”.
After a few weeks there, Joseph enthusiastically wrote to his wife: “She is contented completely to be teaching with Mother Isabel. She is happy, looks better than she ever did in her life, is not the slightest bit lonesome, and loves to get letters from [her siblings] telling her how lucky she is to be over here.”
Rosemary was indeed thriving. One of her close school friends, Dorothy Gibbs, wrote to Rosemary’s father: “Please God that someday he will grant you the joy of a perfect healing for her.”
However, Joseph’s known Nazi sympathies, combined with his outspoken opinions that Britain could not win the war and that “democracy was finished”, made his withdrawal as ambassador inevitable.
In November 1940, with America on the brink of joining the conflict, he was sent back to the United States, his political career in ruins. Rosemary accompanied him and, from this point, her life took a tragic downward turn.
- Read more | When and why did the US get involved in WW2?
What happened when Rosemary Kennedy returned to America?
Rosemary’s return to America was disastrous. Taken away from the love and care that had surrounded her in England, she regressed swiftly. The progress she had made at Belmont House vanished. She reportedly had violent seizures and temper tantrums, lashing out at those around her, even her own younger siblings and the children in her charge.
In one incident, reported by Peter Collier and David Horowitz in The Kennedys: An American Drama, Rosemary “suddenly attacked Honey Fitz [the family nickname of her maternal grandfather], hitting and kicking her tiny, white-haired grandfather until she was pulled away”.
Shut up in a convent, she grew defiant of restrictions. The nuns could not control her. “Many nights,” Rosemary’s cousin Ann Gargan recounted, “the school would call to say she was missing, only to find her out walking around the streets at 2am.”
It soon emerged that Rosemary was “sneaking out”, in the words of a fellow patient who shared many years of Rosemary’s later confinement, “to meet men in taverns – men who were happy to give her attention, comfort, and sex”, writes Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff in The Missing Kennedy.
The convent’s sisters informed her father, who was horrified: not only was Rosemary at risk; in his view, she was also jeopardising the high political ambitions he had for his sons. Her erratic behaviour led Joseph to begin investigating surgical ‘solutions’ and, in November 1941, he (without consulting his wife) authorised two surgeons, Dr Walter Jackson Freeman and Dr James W Watts, to perform a lobotomy on Rosemary. She was just 23 years old.
Why was Rosemary Kennedy treated with a lobotomy?
The lobotomy – a new ‘psycho-surgical’ operation that involved separation or removal of pathways between lobes of the brain – was believed to be a cure for a multitude of psychological delinquencies such as alcoholism and ‘nymphomania’ (the term given to uncontrollable and excessive sexual desire).
Up to 5,000 lobotomies a year were performed in the United States during the 1940s, the majority on young women. In total, Dr Freeman was single-handedly responsible for almost 3,000 of these procedures. An article in the Saturday Evening Post in May 1941 praised Freeman’s “pioneering” work and offered hope that the surgery could make patients who were “problems to their families and nuisances to themselves” into “useful members of society”.
Drilling holes into Rosemary’s skull, Dr Freeman inserted a knife and began cutting away the frontal lobes of her brain. Strapped tightly to the table, she was awake and terrified through the procedure. Suddenly, she fell silent and lapsed into unconsciousness.
What happened to Rosemary Kennedy?
The operation had been a catastrophic failure. Rosemary could no longer walk or talk. Even after years of therapy, she could utter no more than a few words and never fully recovered the use of her limbs. Her autonomy, such as it had been, was effectively over. She was to live for the next 64 years hidden away in institutions, needing full-time care.
Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff records that doctors had ordered Rosemary Kennedy “to have no visitors, because they could disrupt and confuse her”. It’s possible that Joseph also directed there to be no visitors, aiming to avoid the charge by political rivals that there was ‘lunacy’ in the family. Whatever the reasons, writes Koehler-Pentacoff, “Rosemary received no visitors during the bleakest years of her life”.
The eldest Kennedy daughter was eventually given a private cottage on the grounds of Saint Coletta’s, a special school in Wisconsin. She lived there quietly, secluded from the press and prying eyes.
In the 1960s, a series of strokes left her father unable to move or talk and her mother later suffered a stroke in the 1980s; both needed constant care. The remaining Kennedy siblings – Ted, Eunice, Jean and Patricia – visited Rosemary in her later years, but for much of her life Rosemary’s very existence was a secret. She lived forgotten by the world, with few companions except the devoted nuns who cared for her.
She occasionally showed tiny signs of progress, but these would vanish again, and for the last years of her life she was huddled in a wheelchair, unrecognisable as the vibrant, beautiful woman who had dazzled the British press in the 1930s. She died in 2005, at the age of 86.
Marius Gabriel’s novel, The Ocean Liner, was published by Lake Union Publishing in March 2018
]]>Conspiracy Revisited: The JFK assassination – Oswald’s second murderhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/conspiracy-revisited-2-jfk-podcast-gerald-posner/2024-04-11T06:00:15.000ZIn part 2 of a special bonus episode of our Conspiracy series, Rob Attar and Gerald Posner delve deeper into the questions surrounding the assassination of JFK. Who did Lyndon Johnson think was behind the murder? Why do so many people believe in a conspiracy theory? And why is Lee Harvey Oswald’s other killing rarely discussed?
]]>Conspiracy Revisited: The JFK assassination – 95 per cent certain?https://www.historyextra.com/membership/conspiracy-revisited-1-jfk-podcast-gerald-posner/2024-04-04T06:26:19.000ZThe killing of President John F Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963 is one of the defining events of the 20th century and the subject of multiple conspiracy theories. In part one of a special bonus episode of our Conspiracy series, Rob Attar rejoins the investigative journalist Gerald Posner to tackle your questions about the assassination and the web of intrigue that surrounds it.
]]>Conspiracy: who killed JFK?https://www.historyextra.com/membership/video-conspiracy-who-killed-jfk/2024-03-19T13:06:26.000ZOn the 22 November 1963, President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and charged with the murder, but over the past 60 years millions of people have come to believe that Oswald was just a small cog in a wider plot to murder the president, orchestrated by a powerful group such as the CIA, the Mafia or the Cuban regime.
In this new episode of Conspiracy, Rob Attar speaks to the journalist Gerald Posner whose landmark 1993 book Case Closed famously concluded that Oswald had indeed acted alone. Together they dissect the evidence from the assassination and consider why conspiracy theories about it have become so widespread.
View Green Video on the source website]]>Who was behind JFK’s assassination? The real history that challenges the conspiracyhttps://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/who-killed-jfk-real-history-conspiracy/2024-02-01T15:01:09.000ZJohn F Kennedy became the 35th president of the United States in 1961 – the youngest person ever elected to that office.
Originally a senator for his home state of Massachusetts, Kennedy’s brief time in the White House coincided with some of the Cold War’s tensest moments – including the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
With a presidential election looming in 1964, it was widely expected that Kennedy – popularly known by his initials, JFK – would soon announce his intention to seek a second term. He regarded Texas as a crucial battleground in the upcoming campaign and an official tour of its major cities was announced for late November 1963.
His assassination in that state was captured on camera by a bystander in what has become one of the most infamous filmed sequences in modern history.
Around 12.30pm on 22 November, as the presidential motorcade moved slowly through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, the boom of gunshots reverberated across the plaza.
One bullet tore through the president’s neck, followed seconds later by a catastrophic shot to his head. As he slumped towards his terrified wife, Jackie, the car accelerated from the scene. JFK was pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital at 1pm.
The conspiracy theory: Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone
Within hours of the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old employee at the Texas School Book Depository – whose building overlooked Dealey Plaza – was arrested in a nearby cinema after several people had witnessed him shoot a police officer dead.
Yet some came to believe that Oswald was a patsy (something he personally declared while in custody) for Kennedy’s enemies, or that he was not the only assassin involved.
Many conspiracy theorists held that the plot was hatched either by the mafia – supposedly enraged by the Kennedy administration’s crackdown on organised crime and JFK’s failure to overthrow Fidel Castro – or by the United States’ own intelligence and security agencies, particularly the CIA and the FBI, in a bid to thwart the president’s alleged plan to pull America out of the Vietnam War.
- Read more | The assassination of JFK: an eyewitness account
Two days after JFK’s assassination, Oswald was himself murdered.
Oswald was being transferred out of Dallas Police Headquarters towards an armoured car that would take him to the county jail, and such was the interest in Oswald that even this was televised. And so audiences across America witnessed the moment when local nightclub owner Jack Ruby tore from the crowd and shot Oswald at close range.
Oswald died shortly after at Parkland Memorial Hospital. For those who would come to believe that he hadn’t acted alone, this was clear evidence of Oswald’s handlers silencing the main suspect in JFK’s assassination.
What is the source of the theory?
According to investigative journalist and writer Gerald Posner, Ruby’s murder of Oswald “is what really robs us of knowing what happened in detail” and is “why the case will never be closed”.
Up until that moment, many Americans had assumed Oswald bore sole responsibility for JFK’s assassination. But Ruby’s act of vigilante justice deprived posterity of hearing Oswald’s testimony and began to sow suspicion in people’s minds.
“Within 48 hours, people are wondering, ‘what happened?’,” says Posner, who was speaking to us for an episode of our Conspiracy podcast series. "Then the Warren Commission [established by JFK’s successor, Lyndon B Johnson, to investigate the events of 22 November 1963] comes out a year later with its massive report, and most people don’t like the idea of a government commission to decide what happened on a big controversial historical area,” says Posner.
Moreover, the Kennedy family insisted that X-rays and photographs pertaining to the autopsy conducted on JFK should not be put on the public record.
The Commission also determined that other documents remain classified until 2039 – factors which only served to fuel conspiracy theorists.
The reasons why the theory took hold
In the wake of JFK’s assassination, public mistrust of government grew alongside a youth-led counterculture. America’s ongoing Vietnam war became increasingly unpopular, while the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and JFK’s brother, Robert Kennedy, both in spring 1968, struck at the heart of the nation’s sense of assurance.
Then in the early 1970s, the Watergate scandal unmasked a duplicitous side to US politics and emboldened those who believed that government agents might have been behind JFK’s death.
- Read more | What if JFK had lived?
Posner stresses that many also doubted Oswald’s ability as a marksman despite his military training in the US Marines Corps.
“A lot of people say there was a world-class assassin somewhere on the grassy knoll [in Dealey Plaza]. There are plenty of people … who came forward 10 and 15 years after the assassination to say ‘Oh, I saw a puff of smoke over there. I saw somebody running’ … those accounts don’t hold up, but still, they stick with a lot of people.”
Others insist that there were multiple assassins in the vicinity and dismiss as implausible the evidence that the second bullet fired by Oswald ripped both through JFK’s neck before passing through Texas Governor John Connally’s (who was sat in front of the president) chest and wrist before embedding itself in his left thigh.
Conspiracists deride this account as the ‘magic bullet theory’ because they perceive its trajectory as impossible when the location of the two men’s wounds is considered with their respective positions in the limousine. Connally survived, and the largely intact bullet was later found on the same stretcher he had occupied in Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Moreover, the conclusion of the US House of Representatives’ 1976 Select Committee on Assassinations endorsed the notion that JFK had almost certainly been the victim of a conspiracy. Posner notes that “even though that gets debunked, most people just remember the headline.”
Similarly, the 1991 Oliver Stone movie, JFK, which, Posner concedes, is “good in terms of the power of the film, but not in terms of its storytelling”, strengthened the notion that the public wasn’t being told the full story. That is because it revitalised the widely discredited investigation into the assassination conducted by New Orleans district attorney, Jim Garrison.
Conspiracy: A HistoryExtra podcast series
Member exclusive | Was the moon landing faked? Did Shakespeare actually write his plays? Were the pyramids built by aliens? Expert historians offer their perspectives on history's biggest conspiracy theories. Listen to all episodes now
The evidence that debunks the theory
Perhaps no other piece of documentary evidence conveys the tragedy of the assassination more than the Zapruder film.
Recorded on a silent 8mm film by Abraham Zapruder, a spectator in Dealey Plaza on that fateful November day, the silent 26.6-second-long footage was bought by LIFE magazine and not shown publicly until 1975.
“It’s disgraceful that the public had not seen that film years earlier. They had a right to see it,” says Posner.
Ballistics experts agree that the film demonstrates that the bullets came from behind the limousine (where Oswald was aiming his rifle from a sixth-floor window inside the Texas School Book Depository). Despite this, some theorists maintain that JFK’s sudden jerk backwards in his seat shows there was an assassin firing head-on, or even that the film was subsequently tampered with.
Nevertheless, the footage does corroborate the angle taken by the single bullet which passed through JFK and then into Texas Governor, John Connally, and is consistent with the wounds both men sustained.
Indeed, “the rifle that’s found the next day at the Depository [is] tied ballistically to the bullets that hit Kennedy and the governor to the exclusion of any other gun in the world” says Posner.
- Read more | 50 assassinations that changed the world
For Posner it all comes down to Oswald himself: “It’s only once you come to understand Oswald … that you get a feeling for how he could possibly end up in a window in Dallas shooting at the President of the United States.”
Oswald grew disillusioned with America during his miserable experience with the Marines, where he endured bullying from the other recruits. His defection to the USSR in 1959 aroused the KGB’s suspicions and – despite acquiring a Russian wife – his experience there instilled in him a contempt for Soviet Communism coupled with the disdain he felt towards his capitalist homeland.
The FBI interviewed Oswald upon his return to the United States in 1961; the result was that it opened an investigative file on him. In April 1963, he attempted to murder an ex-army general – though Oswald was only identified as the suspect in the report of the Warren Commission. He spent the summer of 1963 distributing pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans and headed to Mexico City seven weeks before JFK’s assassination.
From Mexico City, Oswald’s efforts to visit Cuba were dashed by the Cuban and Soviet consulates (both of which were under CIA surveillance). Taking a job at the Texas School Book Depository that autumn was something of a fluke, as Posner explains: “It’s an assassination that becomes available to him.”
Ultimately, government secrecy has helped fan the conspiracy theory for decades.
“What I think is still keeping a large segment of people from settling on a decision is the fact that the government still has secret files,” says Posner. “These documents should have been out decades ago.”
Nevertheless, he concedes that there will be no epiphany even after the final document is released.
“People won’t say ‘Oh, it’s now the lone assassin.’ They’ll say ‘They must have destroyed the smoking gun’.”
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Gerald Posner is an investigative journalist, whose landmark 1993 book Case Closed famously concluded that Oswald had indeed acted alone. He was speaking to Rob Attar for this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, part of our Conspiracy podcast series
]]>Conspiracy: who killed JFK?https://www.historyextra.com/membership/conspiracy-who-killed-jfk-podcast-gerald-posner/2024-01-18T11:42:47.000ZOn the 22 November 1963, President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and charged with the murder, but over the past 60 years millions of people have come to believe that Oswald was just a small cog in a wider plot to murder the president, orchestrated by a powerful group such as the CIA, the Mafia or the Cuban regime.
In this new episode of Conspiracy, Rob Attar speaks to the journalist Gerald Posner whose landmark 1993 book Case Closed famously concluded that Oswald had indeed acted alone. Together they dissect the evidence from the assassination and consider why conspiracy theories about it have become so widespread.
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