Margot Asquith was the wife of Herbert Henry Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister who led Britain into war in August 1914. Asquith's early war leadership drew praise from all quarters, but in December 1916 he was forced from office in a palace coup, and replaced by Lloyd George, whose career he had done so much to promote. Margot had both the literary gifts and the vantage point to create, in her diary of these years, a compelling record of her husband's fall from grace. She once described herself as 'a sort of political clairvoyant', but she did not anticipate the premier's fall, and it is...

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...