If it weren't for the medicines, he never could have been President. They put him on a huge number of pills and medications, including antispasmodics, steroids, procaine, paregoric, phenobarbital, and testosterone. 'All these diseases and ailments meant he was under almost constant attention from a variety of physicians. He had prostatitis, urethritis, diarrhoea, sinusitis, badly elevated cholesterol. He had terrible back problems-he couldn't turn over in bed at night and he couldn't pull the shoe and sock on his left foot. 'His problems were lifelong and life threatening: he had spastic colitis as a teenager, and then Addison's disease.

There had been a cover-up: the extent of Kennedy's ailments had been brilliantly and systematically hidden from the public. I applied to a committee that controls his medical records, and after almost 40 years they agreed it was time to open them up. 'Presidential libraries often take 30 or 40 years to open their holdings, and I knew that new materials on Kennedy would be coming to hand. The book stayed at number one in the New York Times bestseller chart for the whole of June UK publication will be in time for the 40th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination in November. Such stories form only a small part of this well-reviewed reappraisal, the first authoritative single-volume life of JFK for several decades. Dallek's landmark John F Kennedy biography made headlines in the US earlier this year, with its revelations of the former president's grave health problems and incessant womanising.

Robert dallek kennedy