Johnny Grimond

This diary of a prime minister’s wife offers a front-row seat to the Great War

A review of Margot Asquith’s Great War Diary, 1914–1916: The View from Downing Street, edited by Michael and Eleanor Brock. As you’d expect, the cast of characters is worthy of a Shakespearian history play

British author and socialite Margot Asquith. Photograph: Sasha/Getty Images 
issue 19 July 2014

When Margot Asquith’s name crops up these days, it is usually in a retelling of the story about her meeting Jean Harlow, sexy star of the silver screen, who repeatedly called her Margotte. Eventually, Margot became irritated. ‘No, my dear,’ she corrected. ‘The “t” is silent, as in Harlow.’ It’s a good story, but apocryphal and, I was always told by those who knew her (she was my great-grandfather’s second wife), quite untypical of her. No matter. She had plenty of good lines that were unquestionably her own, as this diary vividly attests.

She was at her best when analysing friends and enemies, which were sometimes interchangeable categories. And as the Prime Minister’s wife during the period covered by this volume, she occupied a good vantage point from which to draw her portraits. The dramatis personae of the diary are worthy of one of Shakespeare’s histories, including as they do practically all the prominent British politicians of the Great War.

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