Hartford, Conn. ? William Manchester, author of popular biographies on Winston Churchill and Douglas MacArthur and the controversial chronicler of President Kennedy’s assassination, died Tuesday. He was 82.

Manchester, who had recently suffered two strokes, died at his Middletown home, said Bill Holder, a spokesman at Wesleyan University, where Manchester was a professor emeritus.

Poor health had kept him from completing the third volume of his best-selling Churchill series, “The Last Lion, Volume III.” Paul Reid, a feature writer at The Palm Beach Post, was chosen last month to help finish the book.

Manchester emerged from a working-class childhood in industrial Massachusetts and battlefield experiences as a Marine Corps sergeant in World War II to write about 20th century giants such as Kennedy, Churchill, MacArthur and the Rockefellers.

Although known as an accomplished, readable biographer, historian and author of more than a dozen books, Manchester probably was best known for his relationship with the Kennedys.

Manchester and JFK became friends in 1946 while both were recovering from debilitating war wounds. During the 1950s and the “Camelot” years, Manchester was a confidant to Kennedy and a frequent visitor to the family’s compound in Hyannisport, Mass.

The friendship helped provide Manchester with material for his breakthrough book — the 1962 “Portrait of a President,” the first of three he wrote about the late president. The shattering experience of the Kennedy assassination the following year and an exhaustive, controversial investigation led to “The Death of a President,” published in 1967.

Jacqueline Kennedy made an unsuccessful attempt to block the publication, saying it revealed intimate family details. Manchester eventually agreed to drop certain passages. Still, the book sold more than a million copies.

In 1983, 20 years after the assassination, he wrote “One Brief Shining Moment,” an affectionate retrospective of the Kennedy years.

After his 1968 “Arms of Krupp” — which related the history of the German arms-maker — and his history of the United States from 1933-1973, “The Glory and the Dream,” Manchester took on other major historical figures.

His 1978 biography of MacArthur, “American Caesar,” received a National Book Award nomination and became the basis for a movie. The first of his anticipated three-book biography on Churchill, “The Last Lion: Visions of Glory 1874-1932,” was published in 1983. The sequel, “The Last Lion: Alone 1932-1940,” came out in 1988.