Robert Harris launched his career writing fiction with Fatherland in 1992, speculative historical piece that looked at what might have happened had the Nazis won World War II. For over 30 years, his historical thrillers and espionage novels have gained a huge following. In his latest political thriller, Precipice, Harris again looks at historical fact through the lens of fiction and fills in the gaps. In this instance he has a fascinating trove of detail to work with.
The book begins in July 1914, when 27-year-old Venetia Stanley receives one of her frequent letters from the British prime minister Herbert Henry Asquith, 35 years her senior. The story isn’t a thriller in the conventional sense, but the stakes are so high, the risks so great and the potential for serious crimes so near that it earns its place in that category.
As the story begins, Asquith has been prime minister for six years. Although the country is mere weeks from the beginning of the military catastrophe of World War I, and though Asquith is on the precipice of political calamity, with many, many tough decisions looming, he finds time to maintain this astonishing epistolary romance. It isn’t terribly surprising that a charismatic, handsome politician would have an affair. Goodness knows, political leaders are hardly models of marital fidelity. The surprise is the degree of his obsession.
In the real world, the public first learned of this correspondence when about half the letters were published in 1982. The author assures us that all the quotes from Asquith’s letters are authentic, as are excerpts from other official documents. On his last day at Number 10, after being ousted by ambitious David Lloyd George, Asquith burned Venetia’s letters to him. Now Harris has filled in the other half of this conversation.
Asquith writes Venetia not just an occasional letter, but an astonishing 560 over a three-year period, at times as many as three a day. He writes them during deliberations of the war council, when he should be writing speeches, during cabinet meetings, and he sends her copies of telegrams and other official correspondence. Thus, at critical points in the government’s deliberations leading up to and during the War, he is severely distracted.
You may start out with some sympathy for them both. He is under almost unbearable pressure, surrounded by officials whose motives are partially or wholly self-interested. He cannot confide in his wife, as Harris describes her, because she is opinionated and shares her views indiscriminately. She wants so badly to be an insider, but her behaviour assures that she cannot be. When he first became PM, she referred to herself as the ‘Prime Ministress’ but he soon put a stop to that.
Harris invents a fictional Scotland Yard operative, Paul Deemer, who’s assigned to read their correspondence and determine whether it’s being leaked to German spies. It’s filled with endearments, but also contains war plans, troop movements and political manoeuvrings. Venetia knows more about what is going on at the top of British government than almost anyone else. Plus, she’s privy to the PM’s take on things, which in his hands-off, wait-and-see management style, plenty of other people would like to know.
Venetia, as Harris portrays her, justifies her closeness to ‘Prime’, as she calls him, because she serves a unique and important role, as confidant and safety valve. He relies on her judgment and loyalty and can talk to her as he can to no one else. If that were the extent of their relationship – the full extent is unknown, but if you read between the lines of his correspondence, you may have an opinion – it would be irregular, but understandable. But, gradually, his preoccupation with her becomes oppressive.
As events of the day mount in their seriousness, the burden of all her special knowledge becomes almost unbearable, and she resolves to create a life of her own. She takes up a nursing course with an eye to helping wounded soldiers in France, a move the PM finds almost intolerable. She can no longer be available to him as often as he would wish and his letters take on a whining, wheedling tone, that you may find more appropriate to a 15-year-old boy, not a mature, successful man in his 60s. You may have to keep reminding yourself that these are his actual words.
With the looming possibility of war, Asquith’s cabinet – except for Churchill, apparently – hope against hope it won’t happen, but of course we know it will. As an experienced writer of historical fiction, Harris has a good eye for period detail and the telling anecdote that will create believable, almost overpowering drama. In a great many thrillers, you may not care all that much about the characters, but in this one, you must. It’s a terrific book.
For more historical crime fiction see Scarlet Town by Leonora Nattrass or Dirty Geese by Lou Gilmond.
Hutchinson Heinemann
Print/Kindle/iBook
£10.99
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
