Asquith Letters to Venetia Stanley - Softcover

Brock

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198722915 ISBN 13: 9780198722915

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2014

Synopsis

H. H. Asquith fell in love with Venetia Stanley in the spring of 1912. Over the next three years he wrote to her whenever he could not see her: sometimes three times a day, sometimes during a debate in the house of Commons, on occasion even during a Cabinet meeting.

He shared many political and military secrets with her and wrote freely of his colleagues in government, who included LLoyd George, Churchill, and Kitchener. The correspondence ended abruptly in May 1915 when Venetia told Asquith of her engagement to a junior Cabinet Minister, Edwin Montagu. The Prime Minister, who was at a crisis in his political fortunes, confessed himself utterly heart-broken.

This reissue of Asquith's letters to Venetia Stanley includes explanatory notes from Michael and Eleanor Brock, two of the leading authorities in the field. This volume documents a romance, and yet is vital reading for anyone interested in the history of World War I or in British politics of the time.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Brock is Honorary Fellow, Wolfson College and Nuffield College, Oxford. He is a modern historian, educationalist, and Oxford college head; he was Vice-President of Wolfson College; Director of the School of Education at Exeter University; Warden of Nuffield College, Oxford; and Warden of St George's House, Windsor Castle; he is the author of The Great Reform Act, and co-editor, with Mark Curthoys, of the two nineteenth-century volumes in the History of the University of Oxford. With his wife, Eleanor Brock, a former schoolteacher, he has recently edited a new collection of Margot Asquith's Great War Diaries.

Review

"Through the prism of their domestic life, the book provides an unparalleled glimpse of life in 10 Downing Street."--Wall Street Journal

"The diaries start with the lead-up to war and end with the fall of the last Liberal government and David Lloyd Georges extraordinary coup against the prime minister. Mrs Asquith is well placed to watch it all. Michael and Eleanor Brock have done a fine job as editors. Their footnotes signpost all the major events of the great war and provide the reader with some delicious quotes."--The Economist

"[A] beautiful work of conjugal editorship by Eleanor Brock and her late husband."--The Daily Mail

"Almost every page of her diary carries an interesting remark. The introduction is a model of its kind, setting people and events in context in masterly fashion."--The Spectator

"They may not constitute the most important historical work published in this centenary year, but by a country mile they are the most entertaining."--Max Hastings, Sunday Times

"Michael and Eleanor Brock have edited Margot's writing with meticulous academic precision. This diary is an invaluable and fascinating text, and we must be thankful to the Brocks for producing it."--Jane Ridley, Literary Review

"Reading these diaries has been a pleasure enhanced by its editors, who have set the stage and introduced the cast with lucidity and scholarship."--The Times

"In the present torrent of books about the Great War, this deserves to stand out."--New Statesman

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0198722915
• ISBN 13: 9780198722915
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 722