MRS. ASQUITH.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 November 1920, Page 5

MRS. ASQUITH.

A REMARKABLE BOOK.

LIGHT ON LONDON LIFE.

A LITERARY SENSATION.

By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright,

Received Nov. 4, 11.10 p.m.

London, Nov. 4. The first volume o£ Mrs. Margot Asquith's autobiography has been published for which the writer received £13,000. The book is the literary sen. sation of the year, despite the fact that long extracts have previously been published serially. The newspapers are publishing reviews running into many columns, generally protesting against the utterly false picture of London life, and the lack of proper reticence in retailing personal reminiscences of living notabilities. Nevertheless, the extraordinary vanity of the author, and her capacity for selfrevelation, make, the book interesting feading.

It includes accounts of numberless flirtations, and piquant sketches of such men as the late Mr. Gladstone, Mr. A, J. Balfour, Lord Rosebery, the Rev. J. H. Jowett, Lord Curzon, Lord Tennyson, Lord Morley, and her own husband. A number of denials of Mrs. Asquith's statements have already been published, including one from Lady Gwendoline Cecil, who points out that her father, Lord Salisbury, had been dead a veir before the conversation which Mrs. Asquith describes in detail. Sir Sidney Colvin flatly denies ugly allegations against R. L. Stevenson and his wife.

Mr. Winston Churchill, who published a long review of the book, denies the accuracy of Mrs. Asquith's picturesque account of the British Cabinet awaiting the declaration of war, sitting smoking and saying nothing, adding, "When the clock on the mantlepiece hammered out twelve we were at war." Mr. Churchill points out that war commenjed at 11 o'clock in the morning. The Morning Post describes the book as "Malice in Blunderland."

The Daily Chronicle says it is n pot pourri of indiscretions.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.

[Mrs. Asquith has had unusual op portunities to study the leading figure; and episodes of English life and politics. first as ilie attractive daughter of th© late Sir Charles Tennant, and whose position brought her into the foremost circles of society, and later its the wife of the ex-Prime Minister, Mr. H. H. Asquith. The Daily Mai) has recently been publishing extracts fiom this hook in serial form, and they have aroused wide interest. A remarkable feature of these reminiscences is that their author has regarded nothing as too personal to be revealed, especially .about living celebrities, and m the latest Daily Mail to hand Mrs. Asquith tells, in great detail, how she first met Mr. Asquith at a dinner at the House of Commons, how that night they talked on the terrace of the Hou-e till everyone else had left and light was filling the sky. And then she goes on to tell in detail all their meetings right up till the time Mr. Asquith (wnose first wife died in ISfIV), proposed to her Vanity issues out of this narrative, especially when she expresses the opinion that she was very fitted to become the wife of a possible Prime Minister. Mrs. Asquith was married in 1894.]