In confident Edwardian Britain, the Asquith family rose to the top of politics and society, only for their world to unravel in the killing fields of the Great War. Their story bears all the hallmarks of a 20th-century Shakespearean tragedy, with Prime Minister H.H. Asquith and his mercurial, charismatic wife, Margot, at its heart. Four children from his first marriage also play central roles in this sweeping family saga.

Margot Asquith remains one of the most intriguing prime ministerial spouses in history. Volatile, witty, and politically astute, she was consulted by colleagues, diplomats, and even foreign statesmen. Her stormy relationships with Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, and her bitter enemy Lord Northcliffe—the newspaper baron who helped oust her husband in 1916—feature prominently.

The book draws deeply on Margot’s journals and Asquith’s letters, revealing the private man behind the urbane public figure—his heartbreak over the death of his first wife, and a complex marriage to Margot that endured despite his many affairs, including notoriously with Venetia Stanley. Margot’s fraught, often jealous, relationship with her brilliant stepdaughter Violet is a constant theme. Yet Violet remained deeply attached to her father throughout his life.

Raymond, the eldest son, was a brilliant Oxford scholar and barrister, but also the central figure in the dissolute “Corrupt Coterie.” He died heroically at the Somme, aged just 37. Herbert (“Beb”), the shy second son, married the striking Cynthia Charteris, became a war poet encouraged by D.H. Lawrence, and endured shell shock before surviving the war. Arthur (“Oc”), the youngest and most grounded, was the first to enlist and became one of WWI’s most decorated officers before losing a leg after Passchendaele. General Freyberg VC called him “the bravest man I ever knew.”

Shattered by Raymond’s death, Asquith was driven from office in a press-fueled coup, despite laying the groundwork for eventual victory.