Publication Date: September 17, 2024
“Robert Harris is, simply put, masterful.”—Karin Slaughter
A spellbinding novel of passion, intrigue, and betrayal set in England in the months leading to the Great War from the bestselling author of Act of Oblivion, Fatherland, The Ghostwriter, and Munich.
Summer 1914. A world on the brink of catastrophe.
In London, twenty-six-year-old Venetia Stanley—aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless—is part of a fast group of upper-crust bohemians and socialites known as “The Coterie.” She’s also engaged in a clandestine love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state.
As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer with Scotland Yard is assigned to investigate a leak of top-secret documents. Suddenly, what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that could topple the British government—and will alter the course of political history.
An unrivaled master of seamlessly weaving fact and fiction, Precipice is another electrifying thriller from the brilliant imagination of Robert Harris.
History has a way of dulling rough edges and concealing juicy tidbits. However, author Robert Harris brings to life an affair notable for its political implications.
Drawing upon historical records, along with some fictional tidbits, the author delivers the story of Venetia Stanley and British Prime Minister H.H. Asquith in Precipice.
Their affair, given that she was in her 20s and he a married man in his 60s with numerous children, takes on an even stronger level of salaciousness since they wrote letters to each other. In 1914, those letters took on a more serious tone as Asquith confided in Venetia about political matters.
The book draws upon the more than 500 letters written by Asquith that survived, although Venetia’s letters to the Prime Minister were destroyed. The author uses a fictional police spy to draw attention to discarded letters featuring talk of the war.
While the pace is slow to start, it soon picks up. Precipice offers a unique perspective into seemingly private conversations with political implications.
Robert Harris is the author of Act of Oblivion, Pompeii, Enigma, and Fatherland. He has been a television correspondent with the BBC and a newspaper columnist for London’s Sunday Times and Daily Telegraph. His novels have sold more than twenty-five million copies and been translated into forty languages. He lives in Berkshire, England with his wife, Gill Hornby.
