Politics, Religion, and Love: The Story of H.H. Asquith, Venetia Stanley, and Edwin Montagu, Based on the Life and Letters of Edwin Samuel Montagu

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NYU Press, 1991 - Biography & Autobiography - 843 pages

This is the story of three fascinating and strong-willed individuals: H.H. Asquith, Prime Minister of England; his friend and confidant, Edwin Samuel Montagu, a Jewish member of the Cabinet, and also Secretary of State for India; and the third, the sexually liberated Venetia Stanley, a brilliant adnd politically sophisticated woman and a member of one of England's oldest aristocratic families.
This book is also a recital of racism and anti-semitism in England in the early century - not merely among the uneducated or the lunatic fringe of the Tory Party, but amoing the well-educated, the stars of Oxford and Cambridge, and the leaders of the Liberal Party as well. It demonstrates that even so educated and affluent a man as Montagu, almost totally assimilated, who spent a life time trying to escape his Judaism, who married a woman who had nothing but scorn for all religions - was not immune from the pain and humiliation of anti-semitism.

 

Contents

The Beginning
7
Childhood and Early Education 18791898
27
Cambridge and the Beginning of a Political Career
42
The Liberal Party and the Landslide of 1906
71
Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chancellor of
81
27
93
42
100
The Political Scene 19091911
115
The Balfour Declaration
422
Secretary of State for India July 1917December 1918
450
The Marriage 19171918
484
The Best and Worst of Times 1919
492
The Marriage Continues to Deteriorate 1919
527
Censure and Shame 1920
538
Reading and Montagu 1921
573
The Resignation January February March 1922
609

First Two Years
128
IO A Love Triangle Begins 19111912
171
The Trip to India October 1912March 1913
180
The Triangle Is Now in Place March 1913January 1914
198
Financial Secretary to
210
Five Months of Military and Naval Disasters August
238
Prelude to Political Disaster JanuaryMay 1915
254
Venetia Announces Engagement to Montagu Asquith Forms Coalition Government May 1915
278
Venetias Escape to Francethe Conversion and Mar riage May June July 1915
301
The Coalition May 1915December 1916
327
Montagu at Munitions JulyDecember 1916
350
The Fall of Asquith December 1916
361
The Beginning 19151916
386
Montagu and Reconstruction JanuaryJune 1917
394
Pearl and the Birth of a Daughter 19211922
652
Alone at Eventide MarchDecember 1922
656
Personal and Political Darkness 1923
670
Despair and Death 1924
682
Venetia without Edwin 19241948
703
The Cycle Is Complete The End
730
The Genealogy of Edwin S Montagu
731
Manuscript Sources and Abbreviations
735
Notes
737
238
772
254
790
Bibliography
807
Copyright

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About the author (1991)

Naomi B. Levine, lawyer, graduate of Columbia Law School, editor of the Columbia Law Review, expert in constitutional law, was formerly the National Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress. Currently she is Senior Vice President of New York University.

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