Perhaps because it is such a contradiction in terms, the idea of an American aristocracy is endlessly fascinating - and when one of the royal family spills the beans on another, let's face it, we're all ears. John. H. Davis, first cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, spent many summers in her immediate circle, so he knows what he's talking about - better still, he can write, and his engaging, clean-cut style makes this memoir into a veritable page-turner. The Bouvier family was, in fact, anything but aristocratic. On the contrary, it was a genuine product of the American dream, having been founded in 1815 by a penniless French cabinetmaker who fled to the US after the battle of Waterloo; by the time Jackie was born over a century later, however, the family thought of itself as truly top-notch although, as Davis points out, the fortune amassed by its founder had shrunk considerably by then. From start to finish this is a treasure trove of family gossip. Interspersed with pictures which show that young Jackie was a beauty even at the age of five, are details of the constant vicious fighting between Bouvier mere and pere (the latter was a relentless and unrepentant womaniser), tales of childhood spankings, teenage misbehaviour and the existence of a pair of twins, halfbrother and sister to Jackie, the product of her father's affair with the wife of an English diplomat. Jackie emerges from it all like Venus from the ocean - cool, clean and unreachable, her reserve tempered by the sense of humour which once saw her inform a French photographer to whom she was giving a guided tour of the White House, after she opened an office door and spotted a secretary seated at a desk: "And this is the young lady who is supposed to be sleeping with my husband".
