Senator Edward Kennedy, the veteran Democratic party politician, was released from hospital and returned home today after being diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor.

The 76-year-old, the younger brother of John and Robert Kennedy, waved to a crowd of well-wishers and gave a thumbs-up as he walked out of Massachusetts General Hospital. His dogs greeted him at the hospital door.

Doctors say the liberal Massachusetts Democrat "has recovered remarkably quickly" from a brain biopsy conducted at the start of this week.

Mr Kennedy will recuperate at his Cape Cod home while the doctors await further test results and determine his treatment plan. He has a malignant glioma in his left parietal lobe. Experts say such tumors are almost always fatal, and sufferers usually have a maximum of five years to live.

Yesterday, politicians from all sides held their breath and prayed for one of the genuine titans on Capitol Hill.

Republican Senator John Warner said: "I am so deeply saddened I have lost the words." The White House said that President Bush was “deeply saddened” by the news while John Kerry, his fellow Massachusetts Senator and a close personal friend, described Mr Kennedy as a “living legend”.

Mr Kennedy, the second-longest serving member of the Senate was first elected in 1962, taking over the seat vacated by his brother John in winning the presidency.

But death and trauma have never been far from a family that has held much of America in its thrall for half a century. The eldest brother, Joseph, was killed in the Second World War, President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and Robert Kennedy was shot dead in 1968 during his own White House campaign.

Mr Kennedy, who survived a 1964 plane crash in which one of his aides died, saw his career blighted by an incident in 1969, when Mary Jo Kopechne, a passenger in his car, was killed after he drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick. Mr Kennedy was given a two-month suspended jail sentence for the incident which contributed to his defeat when he ran against President Carter in 1980.

His son, Congressman Patrick Kennedy, is recovering from addiction problems and last year was arrested for crashing his car into a police barrier near Capitol Hill.

However, through it all, the senator has remained a tireless champion of progressive causes from civil rights to opposing the war in Iraq. Earlier this year he gave dramatic backing to Barack Obama, saying that the Democratic presidential candidate can inspire America just as his brothers had once done.

He has more than four years of his current Senate term left to serve and recently signed a $8 million (£4 million) deal for his memoirs.

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