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. An intellectual socialite with the airs, if not the lineage, of an aristocrat, Margot was both a spectator and a participant in the events she describes and in public affairs could be an ally or an embarrassment – sometimes both.
Her diary vividly evokes the wartime milieu as experienced in 10 Downing Street and describes the great political battles that lay behind the warfare on the Western Front, in which Asquith would himself lose his eldest son. The writing teems with character sketches, including Lloyd George ("a natural adventurer who may make or mar himself any day"), Churchill ("Winston's vanity is septic"), and Kitchener ("a man brutal by nature and by pose").Never previously published, this candid, witty, and worldly diary gives us a unique insider's view of the center of power and an introduction by Michael Brock, in addition to explanatory footnotes and appendices written with his wife Eleanor, provide the context and background information we need to appreciate them to the full.
The quintessence of the war as seen by it's greatest player, in a one-volume abridged edition that captures all the drama of the original volumes.A superb piece in literature, Memoirs of the Second World War is a striking, most comprehensive account on this frightful episode. The figures in human losses and destruction speak for themselves. Mr. Churchill's daring, intelligent role throughout the course of the war deserves the admiration of mankind for the years to come. He has every right to depict all those tragic events in first person, not only as an Allied leader but also because his continually being in motion, calling on world leaders as well as visiting the very battlefronts.
All generations should read this book and draw conclusions on the terrible consequences that lack of good will, ambitions and misunderstandings may bring about.
Peter Ackroyd's The Life of Thomas More is a masterful reconstruction of the life and imagination of one of the most remarkable figures of history. Thomas More (1478-1535) was a renowned statesman; the author of a political fantasy that gave a name to a literary genre and a worldview (Utopia); and, most famously, a Catholic martyr and saint.Born into the professional classes, Thomas More applied his formidable intellect and well-placed connections to become the most powerful man in England, second only to the king.
As much a work of history as a biography, The Life of Thomas More gives an unmatched portrait of the everyday, religious, and intellectual life of the early sixteenth century. In Ackroyd's hands, this renowned "man for all seasons" emerges in the fullness of his complex humanity; we see the unexpected side of his character–such as his preference for bawdy humor–as well as his indisputable moral courage.