Edward Kennedy, who died on Tuesday night from the consequences of a brain tumour at the age of 77, surely found political and personal redemption in the end. He did not fulfil the ambitions of his dynastic family by becoming president of the United States, as one brother did and as another might have, both victims of the assassin’s bullets, but he became a lion of the US Senate, liked and admired by friend and foe alike.

His legislative record, touching domestic subjects as vital as immigration, healthcare and education, was second to none. As the country drifted to the right over the past 30 years, his was the distinctive and loudest voice of the liberalism born in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Yet, as politics became more bitterly partisan, he worked across party lines, forming alliances with the most improbable opponents, including even his polar opposite, President George W. Bush.