Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.

Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. was an American businessman, financier and Democratic political figure who served as United States ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1940. His ambassadorship coincided with the Munich crisis, the outbreak of the Second World War and the Phoney War. Kennedy became controversial for his pessimistic assessment of Britain’s prospects and for supporting efforts to avoid or limit a wider conflict with Nazi Germany.

In Mark Ellis’s The Embassy Murders, Kennedy appears under his own historical identity as the American ambassador while DCI Frank Merlin investigates deaths connected with embassy staff. Kennedy’s office, public positions and the diplomatic tensions of 1940 are historical; private conversations, motives and any interaction with fictional characters are imaginative reconstruction.