word：salve

When the time came to write his presidential memoirs, to salve some of that desperate hurt after Bill Clinton thrashed him in 1992, he published instead 600-plus pages of correspondence. They ranged from doting letters to new-born grandchildren to his worries, as a young seaman in 1943, that his girlfriend Barbara, “so darn attractive”, would drop him while he was away; from his attempt to explain the Watergate scandal to his four young sons, to his mortified account of throwing up in 1992 on the Japanese prime minister, “the damnedest experience”. He admitted that some of the letters were nutty. But they were also of the moment. As he said, “It’s all about heartbeat.”