Make Menuconfig Problem

[Tom George <georgeacct@spininternet.com>]

Recovering from a disk crash I installed linux2.2.17 from an official 
debian 2.2-r0 CD set but overlooked the setting which would have 
included a parport in the kernel.  To correct this I decided to build a 
new kernel.  I downloaded linux2.2.19.tar.bz2 from the linux web site, 
unpacked it and tried to run make menuconfig.  The program aborted with 
the message:

                          In file included from lxdialog.c:22:
                          dialog.h:29 curses.h  No such file or directory

apt-get --fix-broken dist-upgrade reports all my files uptodate for the 
stable distribution.  I have also updated versions of all the required 
files listed in Documentation/Changes.

What have I missed?

Tom George