An unconventional view of the First World War from inside the glittering social salon of Downing Street: a story of unrequited love, loss, sacrifice, scandal and the Prime Minister's wife, Margot Asquith.
Anne de Courcy is the author of twelve widely acclaimed works of social history and biography, including The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj, The Viceroy's Daughters, Debs at War and 1939: The Last Season. She lives in London and Gloucestershire.
As I read with increasing amazement at these carryings-on, the
thought kept intruding: this is a plot that Downton Abbey would die
for! ... Anne de Courcy keeps this steaming, erotic merry-go-round
whirling with admirable skill. Using Margot's diaries and a wealth
of letters and other sources, she brings those fraught days of war
alive, weaving them into their context with an immediacy of
unexpected detail ... This book makes you feel you are there
watching the tears fall - especially Margot's - into the emotional
cauldron bubbling out of control
*DAILY MAIL*
Margot Asquith's sharp humour, modern style, intelligence and
wealth fascinated men... Anne de Courcy has a firm grasp of
politics, an acute eye for social detail and a keen perception of
Margot's pains and pleasures. Her narrative is concise and
compelling.
*THE TIMES*
De Courcy, author of the celebrated The Fishing Fleet: Husband
Hunting in the Raj, indulges us with generous quotes from
contemporary correspondence and detailed observation, describing
life at a time of turbulent change through engaging anecdotes and
descriptions
*SUNDAY EXPRESS*
A proper sex in high places scandal... Though Margot Asquith, nee
Tennant, is its main character, her husband's scandalous obsession
with young Venetia Stanley is inevitably centre stage
*THE INDEPENDENT 'Books of the Year'*
A superb evocation of an extraordinary time
*CHOICE Book of the Month*
Fascinating ... Anne de Courcy is sympathetic to her subject. She's
a journalist with a keen eye for detail and no-nonsense
directness
*THE TABLET*
Covers everything from Asquith's infidelity to politics and
parties
*CATHOLIC HERALD*
It conveys Margot's milieu with a nice touch and takes time away
from this enclosed self-regarding world to give us vivid sharp
vignettes of the harder times being experienced by other classes.
De Courcy records very well Margot's tortured jealousy, not only of
her husband's dalliance with Venetia Stanley but of his daughter
Violet's almost incestuous passion for her father
*LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS*
A love triangle that nearly brought down the British government is
at the heart of Margot at War by Anne de Courcy. Margot Asquith,
whose husband was Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916, is the star of
this riveting biography about war, love, marriage and secret
goings-on at 10 Downing Street
*GOOD HOUSEKEEPING*
Margot scandalised society. She refused chaperonage and said what
she thought. Plain, with a broken nose from hunting, she dressed
beautifully, and was immensely rich when she married Herbert Henry
Asquith, subsidising his love of luxury... The research is
impressive and the eventful historical context covered with a light
touch. Enlightening, especially on Asquith's intractable opposition
to the suffragettes.
*WI LIFE*
There are many instances in this engaging book, where, as well us
giving us an informed account of events, the writer includes
observations that are both logical and empathetic. This is a
useful, entertaining and impressive publication
*HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY*
Margot was a rare bird indeed: stylish, idiosyncratic and never
less than controvserial ... Superbly blending the private and
public, domestic dramas with international crises, Anne de Courcy
proves that Mrs Asquith, flamboyant and opinionated, but also
isolated and vulnerable, was peculiarly well suited to a period
when her celebrity, if not her influence, had never been
greater
*COUNTRY LIFE*
A riveting, brilliantly researched picture of Downing Street during
the crucial years in which the world changed irrevocably
*GOOD BOOK GUIDE*
The story of this fascinating character and London socialite is
told with both a storyteller's flourish and a historian's clear
head for the facts by Anne de Courcy in Margot at War. The torrid
personal life of the flamboyant prime minister's wife is pieced
apart by de Courcy, revealing a saga of glamour, affairs and
relationship dysfunction, all unravelling alongside the first
attacks of the Suffragette movement, the swelling unrest over Irish
Home Rule and of course the lead up to the outbreak of the Great
War. File under the "couldn't make it up" category
*IRISH SUNDAY INDEPENDENT*
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