Hillary's story

The answer to your question is page 441. This is where you will find the first - and last - mention of the name Monica Lewinsky in Hillary Rodham Clinton's memoirs.

But don't be tempted to skip straight past the first 440 pages for dirt on the President's extra-maritals with "that woman". There isn't any. The Clintons' linen basket remains firmly padlocked and Hillary obviously has no intention of airing her husband's grubby smalls for all to see - not yet anyway.

Ms Lewinsky shouldn't be too offended by the former First Lady's apparent lack of interest however. At least the background to their affair - the impeachment process and the President's subsequent string of humble apologies - merits a chapter or two. Paula Jones gets little more than a paragraph to herself, and Gennifer Flowers only gets a sentence.

Hillary Rodham (the Senator is clearly on a mission to reassert her own identity) Clinton does not suffer fools gladly, but she does appear to have taken her husband's foolish behaviour in her stride.

She admits to crying and yelling when he finally confessed, some seven months down the line, that the Lewinsky allegations were true. But her religion - she prays every day and attends regular prayer meetings with a mixed group of Democrat and Republican women - and her love for Bill helped her to move on when others might have chosen to move out.

Anyone who doubts her love for her husband, believing instead that their relationship is a marriage of political convenience, will find it difficult to argue their case after reading Living History. Parts of the book are nothing less than an open love letter to the man she met at Yale in 1971.

The first words she heard the then heavy set and heavily-bearded young Democrat say were inauspicious to say the least: "...and not only that, we grow the biggest watermelons in the world."

But his passionate diatribe about his beloved Arkansas caught her attention and she has remained rapt to this day.

"Bill Clinton and I started a conversation in the spring of 1971," she says, "and more than 30 years later we are still talking."

But Hillary Rodham Clinton's memoirs do not begin and end with Bill. They begin on October 26, 1947, when she was born to a middle class, Midwestern family. Her mother had Democratic values but her father was a "rock-ribbed, up-by-your-bootstraps, conservative Republican".

She inherited her political leanings from her dad, before doing a complete U-turn at college, as well as her idiosyncratic laugh, which she describes as "a big rolling guffaw that can send cats running from the room".

This is a good example of the kind of self-deprecating humour with which she peppers her memoirs. She may be resolutely tight-lipped about the Lewinsky affair (no pun intended), but she is refreshingly honest when it comes to her own slapstick tendencies, from the time she threw up over the shoes of a Russian official in the back of a limo on the way to a meeting with President Yeltsin's wife to when the big man himself offered her moose lip soup.

This does not mean, however, that Living History is in any way a knockabout comedy. Mrs Clinton is a serious-minded woman who has enjoyed a serious amount of power over the years.

She relates very strongly to Eleanor Roosevelt: another First Lady who caused controversy for vociferously championing causes such as child labour and civil rights without a public mandate during her husband's presidency. Mrs Roosevelt was called everything from a Communist agitator to a homely old meddler, and was once memorably told by the Interior Secretary Harold Ickes to stop interfering and "stick to her knitting".

She did not, and neither did Mrs Clinton. While other presidents' wives busied themselves organising banquets and redecorating the White House, she developed policy ideas and themes for speeches... as well as organising banquets and redecorating the White House.

She is undoubtedly giving herself a bit of a pat on the back with this book, claiming credit for all her behind-the-scenes achievements during her husband's time as Governor of Arkansas and President of the US, but the fact remains that she has worked incredibly hard.

Her daily juggling act as a mother, wife, political spouse, political force, lawyer and champion of children's and women's causes has not always been easy. In fact, she has dropped the ball on numerous (very public) occasions.

But at least she has tried - and is continuing to try to serve her country in her role as Senator of New York.

Her new life as the star of the show, instead of the faithful sidekick, will make the perfect jumping off point for a second instalment of memoirs. And if she does care to put pen to paper again, she might tackle the only question left unanswered by Living History (other than what the former First Lady really thinks about "that woman"): whether there will be another Clinton on the presidential ticket in the near future.

A student at Maine Township High School once told Hillary Rodham she was "really stupid if she thought a girl could be elected president".

He was referring to the presidency of the student government, but if the rumours are true, he could be made to eat his words - with extra mayo and a pickle on top - in 2008.

Living History, the memoirs of Hillary Rodham Clinton, is published by Headline, £20.

Updated: 10:02 Tuesday, August 12, 2003