Book review: The End Of Asquith by Michael Byrne

A political drama set amidst the upper echelons of the Asquith Government might not sound like everyone’s cup of tea and indeed probably isn’t. Author Michael Byrne nevertheless deserves credit here for almost achieving the impossible task of being both almost wholly historically accurate (as far as I could tell anyway) and being dramatically engaging. The novel often reads like a film or TV script. Anyone planning a drama based around  the very British coup which saw Herbert Asquith usurped as wartime Prime Minister by David Lloyd George in 1916, could do worse than using this book as a starting point.

Even with the absence of  “middle aged man in a hurry” Winston Churchill, who has resigned as Lord of the Admiralty after the Gallipoli disaster and gone to the western front, there are plenty of colourful characters here. Byrne does a good job of seeing everyone’s point of view. Asquith himself is clearly exhausted by power after eight years as Prime Minister, is mourning the recent death of his son in action and prone to composing letters to his ladyfriends during cabinet meetings. He is naturally wary of conceding power to the ruthlessly cunning and mischievous Lloyd George. The sneaky future press baron Max Aitken (then a Tory backbencher, later Lord Beaverbrook) is another major participant. There are plenty of decent characters but there is also lots of skulduggery here.

The stakes were high. The Liberal Party which had won an historic landslide only a decade before was totally wrecked by these developments. On the plus side, the book reminds us that the outcome of the war was not inevitable. In Germany and Russia, similar dissatisfaction with the war leadership at this time, led to disaster: revolution and defeat in one nation, revolution followed by seventy years of tyranny in the other. Britain got off relatively light.

Book review

The End of Asquith

Author: Michael Byrne

Published by: Clink Street

Book review: The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt and the Golden Age of Journalism

Book review: The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Viking/Penguin.

Although not exactly a dynasty, the Roosevelts produced both the best Democrat president (Franklin Delano) while his cousin Teddy, discussed here, was the best Republican one.
Hugely charismatic, energetic and popular, Theodore, a keen hunter and former veteran of the Spanish American Wars, became the nation’s youngest ever president, when at 42, he inherited the office from the unfortunate William McKinley who was assassinated by a Polish anarchist while opening the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo in September 1901.
Roosevelt was elected comfortably in his own right before unwisely relinquishing office in 1988, ignoring enthusiastic pleas from within his own party to stay (there was no two term limit then). He later came to regret his decision even to the point of standing against his successor and old friend Republican President William Taft as a third party Progressive “Bull Moose” candidate. But TR’s intervention proved hugely divisive. Taft, the incumbent, was pushed into a humiliating third place, Roosevelt, the ex-president came second. The victor was Woodrow Wilson, winning only the third victory for a Democratic presidential candidate since the end of the Civil War. Wilson won with 42% of the vote and would undoubtedly have lost had it not been for Roosevelt’s presence in the campaign. Taft went onto achieve his foremost lifelong dream: becoming Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Roosevelt went onto a fairly early death thus only witnessing the start of his cousin Franklin’s rose to power. Wilson led the United States into and through the First World War. The course of global history might have been very different had William Taft or Teddy Roosevelt led in his place.
This is a massive, thorough and entertaining book from Doris Kearns Goodwin whose Team of Rivals inspired not just Steven Spielberg to make his fairly dull Lincoln movie but which may have inspired President Obama to appoint his defeated opponent (and possible successor) Hilary Clinton as his first Secretary of State. This book may turn out to have some lasting political impact too as it is thought to have influenced Ed Miliband, the man most opinion polls suggest will be British Prime Minister within the year. Miliband could do worse than look to Teddy Roosevelt as a role model. Roosevelt was able to use the press of his time to press home the need for reform, however. In 21st century Britain, conditions are less favourable, however. The hostility of the right wing press may ultimately prove the greatest barrier not just to reform but to Mr Miliband even winning office in the first place.