H. H. Asquith: Letters to Venetia Stanley

click here for more details, find new or used items	Michael Brock, Eleanor Brock Pages: (Paperback) ISBN: 9998972663 Pub: Olympic Marketing Corp Pub date: 1985-06

Reader Reviews:

Love and War (0/0 people found this helpful)

I suppose we have to believe the historians when they say that there was "almost certainly" no physical relationship between the British Prime Minister Asquith and the love of his life Venetia Stanley. In 1912 when the letters start he was 59,married with children, and she was 25. They wrote to each other every day (and sometimes more than once a day) for about three years, until Venetia disappointed him by announcing her engagement to a family friend in 1915. By today's standards the tone of his letters (hers have not survived) would certainly lead one to disbelieve the historians:
unambiguous declarations of love, secret assignations, rows of dots for unwritten words (of endearment?). Did they really slake their lust with the occasional game of bridge or round of golf? I would have thought that today the letters alone would have given Asquith's wife (who was fully aware of the relationship) ample grounds for divorce.
Above all however, he let Venetia into State secrets. And remember that during 1914 and 1915 Britain was a country at war. He wrote mostly on 10 Downing Street headed notepaper, sometimes during House of Commons debates, and sometimes even during cabinet meetings at number 10. The enemy could have played havoc if the letters had ever been intercepted. Asquith refused categorically to use this newfangled thing called the telephone.
A curiosity: throughout the book one notes how efficient the postal services were in those days. Asquith gets quite annoyed if a letter takes more than 12 hours between London and North Wales, or Cheshire, or even Scotland. Would that the post office were so efficient today!
Anyway, a lovely book and a pleasant and unusual way of reading about the First World War, with lots of behind the scenes quarrels and ineptitudes. It really is a wonder that the allies won at all.

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