'Indira Gandhi's a bitter pushy prune: Jackie Kennedy's extraordinary verdict on world leaders revealed

• Jackie Kennedy told husband 'I want to die with you' when he tried to send her to safety during Cuban Missile Crisis
• Unreleased interviews reveal she would watch him sleep and go for walks during height of confrontation with Soviet Union
• Recordings were made year after his 1963 assassination

At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Jackie Kennedy begged her husband not to send her to safety in the event of a nuclear attack, previously unreleased interviews have revealed.
The same interviews also highlighted her criticisms of Indira Gandhi, sister-in-law Eunice Shriver and 'egomaniac' Charles de Gaulle as well as captured her calling late brother-in-law Joe Jr 'unimaginative' compared to her husband.
When the First Lady discovered that the Soviets were installing missiles in Cuba targeting U.S. cities in October 1962, Mrs Kennedy pleaded with her husband to remain by his side.

Dedicated: JFK and his wife Jackie hold hands as they meet with delegates in 1962. Previously unreleased interviews have revealed she begged her husband not to send her to safety during the Cuban Missile Crisis that year

In interviews recorded 47 years ago, the newly-widowed former first lady describes how she would lie down next to JFK when he took a nap and go for walks with him as America stared down the barrel of a nuclear war.
She said she told him: 'If anything happens, we're all going to stay right here with you.
'I just want to be with you, and I want to die with you, and the children do, too - than live without you.'
The interviews, titled Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy and due to be released on Wednesday to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy-era administration, were made with historian and former White House aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr in her 18th century Washington home in 1964.
In them, she makes virtually no mention of her husband's assassination on November 22, 1963. JFK's health problems and extra-marital affairs were also still years from public knowledge.

On the brink of war: JFK walks with military leaders in front of missile batteries during the crisis in 1962

Crunch time: The president meets with advisers, including his brother Robert, in the White House at the height of the missile crisis. Most other politicians had sent their families away from Washington

Mrs Kennedy reveals she enjoyed having her husband 'proud of her', saw no reason to have a policy opinion that wasn't the same as his and laughed at the thought of 'violently liberal women' who preferred the more effect Adlai Stevenson to her husband.
She said: 'Jack so obviously demanded from a woman - a relationship between a man and a woman where a man would be the leader and a woman be his wife and look up to him as a man.
'With Adlai you could have another relationship where - you know, he'd sort of be sweet and you could talk, but you wouldn't ever... I always thought women who were scared of sex loved Adlai.'
The interviews also touch on the legacy left by the Kennedy family in U.S. politics and the effect it had within the family itself.
She dismissed the idea that the eldest Kennedy son, Joseph Jr, would have been president if he had not been killed in World War Two.
'He would have been so unimaginative, compared to Jack,' she said.

'Warm': JFK and his son John Jr in 1960. Jackie described him as lying around on the floor to play with his children, despite descriptions of him being 'unemotional'

Fooling around: The President chases after his son in the Oval Office in the White House

And she commented on the ambition with the Kennedy clan, contrasting the integrity of Robert F. Kennedy - the president's brother and attorney general - with the designs of her sister-in-law Eunice Kennedy Shriver.
Robert Kennedy had begged JFK not to appoint him, fearing charges of nepotism.
Eunice Kennedy, however, was anxious to see her husband Sargent Shriver, named head of the department of Health, Education and Welfare.
Jackie told Mr Schlesinger: 'Eunice was pestering Jack to death to make Sargent head of HEW because she wanted to be a cabinet wife.

Jackie had unkind words for Indira Gandhi, calling her a 'prune - bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman' and Charles de Gaulle, whom she called 'spiteful' and an 'egomaniac'

Jackie also said her late brother-in-law Joe Kennedy Jr would not have been very imaginative as president when compared to husband Jack

'You know, it shows you some people are ambitious for themselves and Bobby wasn't.'
Mrs Kennedy also had harsh words for overseas diplomats.
She referred to French president Charles de Gaulle, whom she famously charmed on a visit to Paris, as 'that egomaniac' and 'that spiteful man'.
While she thought Indira Gandhi, the future prime minister of India, was a 'prune - bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman.'
The interviews also reveal Mrs Kennedy's loathing for black civil rights leader Martin Luther King, who she described as a 'terrible man' and a 'phoney'.

Mourning: Jackie Kennedy with her children Caroline and John at her husband's funeral in 1963. Behind them is Robert Kennedy, who was himself assassinated in 1968

Memorial: Jackie and her daughter Caroline, centre, with Queen Elizabeth II at a ceremony for JFK in Runnymede, England

Cortege: The coffin of President Kennedy is led to its final resting place in Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington

And they cover JFK's fears over his vice-president Lyndon Johnson succeeding him in office.

Jackie said sister-in-law Eunice Shriver, Maria's mom, wanted her husband made head of HEW so she could be a cabinet wife

She said her husband would say to her: 'Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon were president?
'And Bobby told me that he'd had some discussions with him... do something to name someone else in 1968.'
Mrs Kennedy preferred others in her husband's administration, calling Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg 'brilliant'.
But she added: 'He talks more about himself than any man I've ever met in my life.'
Meanwhile White House speechwriter Theodore Sorensen had a 'big inferiority complex' and was 'the last person you would invite at night.'
In June, an extract of one of the interviews had Mrs Kennedy saying her husband felt his legacy would be secured if he was assassinated after his Cuban missile crisis success of 1962.
'If anyone's going to kill me, it should happen now,' he supposedly said.
Professor Robert Dallek, a Kennedy era historian, has said JFK’s remark may have been inspired by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, in 1963.

Not a fan: Mrs Kennedy with her husband meeting French President Charles De Gaulle during a visit to Paris