Summary
16 September 2011
An interview given by the late Jacqueline Kennedy shortly after her husband President Kennedy was assassinated has been made public. The audio tapes reveal some of the dislikes of America's most famous First Lady.
Reporter:
Rajesh Mirchandani
Listen
Click to hear the report:
Report
In the eight hours of relaxed chat between Jacqueline Kennedy and an historian some candid moments reveal strong opinions of world figures.
Churchill in the fifties she says was already quite ga-ga, civil rights leader Martin Luther King was ''a tricky person'', Indira Gandhi, before she became India's first prime minister, was to Mrs Kennedy ''a bitter, horrible woman''.
The tapes include plenty of tender family moments, at one point three-year-old John Kennedy Junior interrupts, the interviewer asks if he knows what happened to his father. He's gone to heaven the young child answers.
What's most remarkable is that these recordings were made just four months after JFK was assassinated. Until her death in 1994 Jacqueline Kennedy stayed silent about her celebrated life. Now we have a rare glimpse in her own words.
Rajesh Mirchandani, 大象传媒 News
Listen
Click to hear the vocabulary:
Vocabulary
- chat
informal conversation
- candid moments
frank and honest conversation about difficult matters
- ga-ga
mad, insane
- a tricky person
a difficult individual to deal with
- bitter
a person that feels angry because she is unable to forget negative events that happened in the past
- gone to heaven
died and gone to a religious afterlife
- remarkable
surprising and noticeable
- stayed silent
didn't speak publicly about it
- celebrated life
publicly-known past experiences
- a rare glimpse
an infrequent chance to see briefly