Robert Harris’ 2024 novel Precipice is a clever mixture of history and fiction. Britain’s prime minister in 1914, Henry Asquith, married with grown-up children, had some sort of relationship with a much younger woman, Venetia Stanley. That much is fact, because his letters to her survive. Her replies do not and that is what gives Harris the space to create a story about what may have been going on. Asquith’s letters make clear that he had got into the habit of confiding in her about government business and even sending her confidential documents.
Asquith was also in the habit of taking her for drives in his car, the blinds drawn and the chauffeur unaware of what was happening just behind him. He screws up an official telegram and casually throws it out of the window. It is found and handed in by a member of the public and an investigation into a possible security breach is started by the early version of what is now MI5.
There is a powerful sense of the pressure Asquith was under, first to try and find a solution for Ireland and then as events led inexorably to Britain’s involvement in the first world war.
The sheer number of letters and their frequency is staggering. This was made possible by the efficiency of the postal service at that time, with several deliveries each day. It feels like a present-day couple communicating by text message. The question being asked here is whether Venetia Stanley was a necessary support to Asquith when he was under huge pressure or a distraction when his mind should have been on other things.
It’s quite astonishing that Asquith might have been so distracted over Venetia that he wasn’t paying full attention when the cabinet was debating whether the Gallipoli operation should go ahead. No less astonishing is that he couldn’t be quite sure what general Sir John French had actually said about the shell supply situation on the western front because he had sent Lord Kitchener’s letter to Venetia.
It’s a bit similar to Harris’ earlier novel, Munich, in that it’s more of a character study of a prime minister than anything else. Like that novel, it’s packaged as a thriller but it isn’t really, as the spy plot involving a completely fictional character is rather less convincing and seems a bit “bolted on”. The part where the investigator goes undercover to infiltrate the Stanley family home is the most fictional and the least convincing, I feel.
Harris is on firmer ground with his depiction of a time and a particular class of people. Did Asquith and Venetia actually have a physical affair? Harris hints that upper-class girls knew exactly how to go so far and no further. The suggestion is that whatever they were doing in the back of that car, it wasn’t full intercourse.
There are a couple of historical details that I particularly liked. When Venetia takes a job as a nurse, the artist Sir John Lavery comes to the hospital to do a painting in the ward, featuring Venetia and a wounded soldier. This is a description of a real painting. And I hadn’t realised the extent of the anti-German riots after the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. Apparently, in Southend, the army was called out to restore order.
Harris is an established and well-connected author, a former Times journalist and something of a political insider. Only someone like that could get the access and necessary permissions from the characters’ descendants to tell a story like this one. I think some of the dialogue seems a bit too modern, but this may be deliberate. The whole situation between Asquith and Venetia feels rather modern. I wondered whether Harris might be trying to draw a parallel with more recent events. Does he have any particular current politician in mind?
But the great strength of this novel is the depiction of how people of that class lived at that time, which is very convincing. When the novel opens, Venetia is a member of a loose group of wealthy young people known as the Coterie. Their cavalier attitude to life is revealed by their reaction to a drowning in the Thames during that carefree summer of 1914.
This world is created so vividly that the historical note at the end about the decline of the Stanley family is rather sad: “Venetia died in 1948 at the age of sixty. By then, the Stanley family’s fortunes were in steep decline. Today, Alderley Park no longer exists; all that remains of Penrhos House are parts of the walls and corner towers, mostly overgrown with ivy, hidden in the woods.”
The Good Reader 