'I became,' he writes, 'the family uncle.' This terrible decade must have left many inner wounds. When Bobby was assassinated in 1968, the baby of the Kennedy family suddenly became father to a brood of orphans. Six months after this trauma, in June 1964, Teddy was nearly killed in a light-plane crash, an accident in which he broke his back and had to endure months of rehab. In 1962, Teddy fought, and narrowly won, a vicious Senate campaign for Massachusetts. In December 1961, his father, Joe, to whom he was exceptionally close, suffered a disabling stroke. A lesser man might have buckled, but now the famous Kennedy upbringing, almost Roman in its stoicism, came into its own. Instead, the 60s became a progressively more brutal test of his resilience.

Powers, too, relishes the tales from the campaign trail, the Democratic convention in LA, the televised debates with Nixon, and finally the snowy magic of inauguration day, 1961. Kennedy's recollections of his first exposure to national politics are fresh, vivid and surprising. This, for my money, is the meat of this memoir. Teddy was his elder brother's campaign manager, backed up by a team of college professors and political hacks, the 'eggheads and hardheads'. Jack's run for the White House, as epic as Obama's in 2008, was the culmination of Rose and Joe Kennedy's extraordinary parental ambition and always a family affair. Worries about his prospects were soon swamped by the presidential campaign of 1960. Although he followed Jack into Harvard, Teddy ruined his record by cheating in a Spanish exam. He sat at a small table apart from his parents and brothers and grew up surrounded by sisters, averring a special love for Jean, closest in age. 'What the hell do I have to do to be called an American ?' he roared when, yet again, the press disparaged his Irish roots. Teddy's father, Joe Sr, instilled a family culture of remorseless competition, derived from his own insecurity.

To be born a Kennedy was to be born fighting. For anyone who has grown up with the fables of Jack and Jackie, this is an absorbing tour of the Kennedy backlot. Only a dedicated Kennedy-hater could take issue with it. Kennedy is writing for posterity, spinning from the grave, but not much is left out. Cleverly, the ghost has also given his subject a certain salty charm. The senator would supply his version Powers would give the book shape, style and coherence. When, in May 2008, Kennedy was diagnosed with brain cancer, his collaboration with Ron Powers took on a new purpose: 'My demise did not fit into my plans,' he jokes.

True Compass has the narrative drive of a book written in the shadow of the grim reaper. Now, less than a month after his funeral, out comes this memoir, part autobiography, part apologia. Even his passing was marked by the kind of solemnity accorded heads of state and his reputation redeemed in extravagant public obsequies.

True Compass by Edward M. Kennedy