Edwardian Requiem, by Michael Waterhouse – review

The photograph on the jacket, reproduced above, says it all — or at least all of what most of us think we know about Sir Edward Grey. Patrician, reflective, dignified, he stares into the future with the uncompromising honesty of one who has never even contemplated straying from the paths of rectitude. In fact, he was more interesting than that, but Michael Waterhouse’s thoughtful biography reveals that the image and the reality were not so very different.

Grey’s private life was a little more chequered than might have been expected.  Though properly cautious about what can be no more than surmise, Waterhouse credits Grey with several extramarital affairs and at least two probable bastard children. Given, however, that his first wife — whom he loved devotedly — eschewed any sort of sexual relationship, he can hardly be blamed for looking elsewhere. He conducted his affairs with admirable discretion and good manners.

It was his honesty, his integrity, which most impressed his contemporaries. The German ambassador, Paul Wolff-Metternich, found himself at odds with Grey over many important issues, but he never doubted that he was dealing with a man of honour. Grey ‘gives me the impression of being a frank, straightforward man,’ wrote the ambassador. ‘One knows where one is with him.’ He was accepted by everyone as being a man of his word: ‘sound, temperate and strong’, wrote Asquith — not the most colourful of attributes but particularly estimable in a politician.

For a man who seemed so cautious in his views, he could be surprisingly radical. He had doubts about the Boer War. ‘I am depressed about this war,’ he told a friend. ‘I admit the necessity of it and that it must be carried through but it has no business to be popular.’