There’s nothing wrong with being in love! To be recommended from time to time actually… And it’s quite normal if the initial sensation of ‘being in love’ blinds you to pretty much everything else in the world. Problems arise though if this blindness gets in the way with the fact that the country you’re Prime Minister of is sliding rapidly and inexorably into a state of war with Germany, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire!
And expect those problems to get worse if you treat your sweetheart to every state secret going, chuck secret dossiers nonchalantly out of your limousine window, and value her opinion on military tactics over your experienced generals.
Such, incredibly, was the position that Lord Asquith found himself in 1914. Leader of an empire, betrothed, the end of civilization apparently hanging in the balance, and so utterly infatuated with Venetia Stanley, 35 years his junior, that his over-riding preoccupation was writing to her 3 times a day.
Precipice is a self-acknowledged creation of fact and fiction, but there is enough fact here (I googled it!) to make the story completely mind-boggling at times, and I found myself racing through the pages.
Harris is a master of the suspenseful tale: brilliant at mixing high political drama with anguish of the heart; and, although Precipice is perhaps a bit lighter than some of his earlier works like Pompeii and Fatherland, I enjoyed it as much as these.
Highly recommended.
Al
Buy a copy here: Precipice a book by Robert Harris.