Precipice by Robert Harris

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This is a fascinating window into what feels very much like a lost world. The world of Edwardian Britain, of house-parties and of decadence and entitlement.

It is an age where the political class was a breed of amateurs. No 10 is still primarily a home, a residence, not an office with a flat attached. The letters Asquith writes are extra-ordinary, as is their survival which allows them to provide the factual core around which Harris spins this tale.

It is interesting to have this perspective on Churchill and his association with the failure of Gallipoli, not the hero of the Second World War, although in many ways Harris hints that the characteristics that undid Churchill then would be the same characteristics that actually shaped his later triumph.

But I think we should focus our attention on Venetia Stanley, surrounded by a cast of powerful men, she is the one the shines off the page. She has a life of the highest privilege, and yet as a women in that era there were constraints on her – her class clearly gave her agency far greater that most women around her, but even so there were limitations on her.

Although the greatest marvel is perhaps the postal service, that they were not exchanging daily letters but multiple letters a day – almost unimaginable as letter writing fades for us as other instance modes of communication dominate and the postal service limps and whimpers in the background.