A review of the novel “Precipice” by Robert Harris
Can you imagine a sitting British Prime Minister – on his second marriage and father to seven children – taking time off from affairs of state, on the edge of the greatest war the world had ever seen, to write these words to a society woman some half his age: “thinking & remembering & longing & hoping: and all thoughts & memories & longings & hopes centre around & in one person”?
This was 61 year old Liberal PM Herbert Asquith writing to 26 year old Venetia Stanley in late 1914 and early 1915 in a correspondence that involved several letters a day every single day (at the time, there were 12 daily deliveries in London). He eventually burnt all her letters but she kept all of his and some 560 still survive.
It is around this utterly astonishing correspondence that Harris has created the latest of his 16 bestselling novels (this is the tenth that I’ve consumed), quoting Asquith’s actual words and imagining those of Stanley. The author is an excellent storyteller and this is one of his most absorbing novels yet. As always, his research is deep and his narrative compelling, even when – as is so often the case with his historical novels – we know the outcome.