London, May 24 : After more than 45 years, a former White House intern is breaking her silence to reveal the details of her 17-month affair with President John F Kennedy.

Mimi Beardsley Alford, now 66, a retired New York church administrator, maintained the secret about her relationship with the womanising president until a new Kennedy biography was published in 2003.

The biography revealed that he began an affair in June 1962 with Mimi Beardsley. The 19-year-old student working in the White House press office was described as a "tall, slender, beautiful" by Kennedy''s biographer, Robert Dallek, The Telegraph reported.

Now, Mimi is working on a memoir entitled Once Upon a Secret about hiding such an explosive episode in her past for most of her life, the New York Times reported.

For the memoir, Mimi will receive an advance believed to be worth nearly 1 million dollars from Random House, the publisher.

She was tracked down and identified as a divorcee working for a Manhattan presbyterian church who had told nobody about the affair.

She gave a brief statement confirming a "sexual relationship" had lasted until his assassination in November 1963, but has said nothing more since then.

Susan Mercandetti, executive editor at Random House, said: "It''s about a loss of innocence. I was just completely struck by how simple, yet how profound, it was." (ANI)