(Henry Asquith and his long-suffering wife Margot. Much of the book relies on her accounts of the war and the pair’s relationship)

There are few purveyors of historical fiction that I await with bated breath until their next novel is published.  One such author is Robert Harris.  I have spent hours reading his novels and never completed one without feeling totally satisfied.  His last novel, ACT OF OBLIVION brilliantly reimagines one of the great manhunts in English history, the search for two men involved in the killing of Charles I.  Others include CONCLAVE which presents the politics and machinations in electing a Pope; MUNICH examines the process that led to the infamous conference that provided Adolf Hitler with the Sudetenland; FATHERLAND, an alternate history with the Nazis victorious in World War II and its implications; ARCHANGEL a novel that is built around a lost diary of Joseph Stalin; ENIGMA, the reader is transported to 1943 as the allies try to break the German code as u boats wreak havoc in the Atlantic; V2 focuses on the German missile campaign during World War II; AN  OFFICER AND A SPY recreates the Dreyfus Affair as a Jewish officer is accused of selling war secrets to the Germans in the 1890s; THE SECOND SLEEP, a book whose power lies in its between-the-lines warning that our embrace of the internet represents some kind of sleepwalk into oblivion; THE GHOST WRITER, a thriller of power politics, corruption and murder involving the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister; finally there are Harris’ exquisite novels that are referred to as THE CICERO TRILOGY: IMPERIUM, LUSTRUM/CONSPIRATA, DICTATOR tracking the orator’s rise and fall, and the stand alone thriller POMPEII set during the Vesuvius eruption. 

In his latest novel, PRECIPICE, like much of Harris’ work is based on historical fact, is set in the summer of 1914 as England and the rest of Europe are moving closer and closer to war.  The novel takes place over less than a year – from July 1914 to May 1915 and involves a twenty-six year old woman, Venitia Stanley, a clever and reckless person who belongs to upper-class bohemians and socialites called “the Coterie.”  In addition, she is having an affair with a man twice her age, English Prime Minister H. H. Asquith.  After World War I finally commenced we learn that Scotland Yard suspects the leak of top-secret documents and assigns an intelligence officer to investigate.  In constructing the novel Harris was given access to an archive of letters, telegrams and official documents in the possession of the Bonham-Carter family.  Employing these documents Harris has created a brilliant storyline about a secret love affair.

(The Prime Minister, Henry Asquith, was secretly madly in love with a woman less than half his age, Venetia Stanley)

The book is a nice blend of historical events and characters revolving around a true story.  The fictional component rests in Scotland Yard’s investigator, Paul Deemer, who is chosen to ferret out where the leaks are coming from and in so doing he is placed in the midst of Asquith and Stanley’s affair.  The love story component traces the relationship of the “lovesick” Prime Minister of England’s and Miss Stanley.  Harris integrates many letters that pass through the postal system that Deemer intercepts in addition to those that passed between the two before Scotland Yard became involved.  The issue is that for some reason Asquith conveys a great deal of strategic and command intelligence to his paramour.  What possessed him to pass along war secrets, possibly a desire to impress Stanley who he was smitten with, but as he did so he engaged in behavior that was not just reckless but downright illegal.  Amazingly, after showing top secret materials to Stanley, Asquith frequently wads them up and throws them out of the window of a car or reading documents to Stanley while going for a walk and then disposing of them in the trash.  It becomes so bad that Asquith’s attention to War Cabinet meetings and details are compromised as he reads and writes letters to Stanley while conducting the government’s war business.  A case in point is the debate in the War Cabinet to implement First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill’s use of the navy to enter the Dardanelles and attack the Ottoman Empire, a plan that was approved and resulted in the disaster at Gallipoli, and the split in the War Cabinet as to whether England should support France and Belgium.  Further Asquith discloses intelligence pertaining to the back and forth between Serbia and Austria, highlighted by the attitude of the Germans when it came to a possible war.

Harris is a master of highlighting social class inequality and the haughtiness of the Edwardian elite when dealing with wartime issues, and the document leaks.  Harris’ uses Deemer as his mouthpiece as he describes certain individuals as people who “seemed to believe themselves above the rules that applied to ordinary citizens.  Anything that might embarrass them was made to disappear.”   It is seen in the Asquith-Stanley relationship, the attitude of a number of characters, court hearings surrounding the drowning of Sir Denis Anson and William Mitchell, and the types of men who enlist to fight in 1914.  Further Harris juxtaposes the English “upper crust” with the soldiers who are off to war, and the English laboring class. 

(Edwin Montagu)

As the novel evolves familiar historical figures make their appearance.  Apart from Asquith and Churchill we meet Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Minister; Bonar Law, the leader of the Tory Party, Lord Herbert Kitchner, British Secretary of State for War, King George V, Lloyd George, Liberal Party politician and future Prime Minister, Captain Holt Wilson, Commander of Special Branch, Vernon Kell, head of intelligence services responsible for internal security, Edwin Samuel Montagu, a liberal politician who would go on to serve as Secretary of State for India between 1917 and 1922,Albert Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, newspaper magnate who despised Asquith, among others.

Harris’ work exhibits strong research as he is in full command of historical events particularly the diplomatic game that led to the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia that led to the domino effect of countries entering World War I.  In reading Harris’ account, one might have imagined you were reading Barbara Tuchman’s seminal work, THE GUNS OF AUGUST.  As we are exposed to Asquith it becomes increasingly clear that despite the inevitability of war with Germany, his obsession with Stanley was on the top of his agenda. 

Asquith comes across as a “lovesick puppy” as he writes to Stanley three-four times a day and expects the same devotion from her.  Eventually she will grow tired of Asquith’s controlling behavior and thinking of how to extricate herself from their relationship which leads her to join the nursing corps to help English soldiers wounded in the war.  One must wonder that if Asquith was more attentive to his war responsibilities, and less concerned with his love life, the war may have been less deadly and drawn out.  Stanley comes across as more level-headed than her lover and she realizes early on that he should not be sharing wartime documents with her, going so far as trying to encourage him to stop.  Once she decides she doesn’t want to be a useless rich girl she moves to London to study nursing.  She understands how emotionally unstable Asquith has become and she fears if she breaks up the relationship for good, it could be disastrous for England and its allies.

(Winston Churchill, 1914)

Deemer is the character who should be most admired as he continues his investigation of Asquith and Stanleys’ almost hourly exchange of letters as he worries about the mismanagement of the war and its impact on his brother Fred, fighting as an infantryman in France.  Harris has Deemer and Stanley meet as the Special Branch investigator visits his brother in the London hospital in which she is training.  Deemer is an excellent investigator and figures out how to intercept the mail between Asquith and Stanley, steam open the letters and reseal them so they would not realize that they had been compromised.  Further, it is through Deemer that we learn the lengths Asquith has gone to win over Stanley and the type of information he was leaking.

The novel ends suddenly because Harris is inhibited by the historical record.  The main area that I wish Harris had not shied away from were psychological insights into Asquith’s character and needs.  The novel doesn’t focus as much on the chaotic push toward war as Barbara Tuchman as it focuses more on a man’s emotional collapse who is a prime example of human frailty.  However, the real life story ended with less than a bang, but the novel kept my attention throughout, and I recommend it along with his other works.

(Prime Minister H. H. Asquith)