King Richard: A deeply flawed president tripped up by his own paranoia

Richard Nixon veers between Shakespearean tragic hero and pantomime villain in historian Michael Dobbs’s detailed reconstruction of the Watergate scandal

Richard Nixon, watched by his son-in-law David Eisenhower, gives a thumbs-up to the press as he announces his resignation as US president on August 8, 1974. Picture: Getty

HISTORY

King Richard: Nixon and Watergate, an American Tragedy

By Michael Dobbs

Scribe UK, €25.65

“If you want a friend in Washington,” President Harry Truman supposedly once said, “get a dog.” Richard Nixon took his predecessor’s advice, acquiring an Irish setter named King Timahoe after the Co Kildare village where his Quaker ancestors had come from. When the man nicknamed “Tricky Dicky” sought some canine company, however, he usually ended up hopelessly tangled in King ...