Daring Lords and Ladies

✍ Scribed by Murdoch, Emily; Scott, Tarah; Hanford, Summer; Morrison, Michelle; Cornell, Louisa; Jeffers, Regina; Wynne, Aubrey

• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 777 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ASIN: B08DM9PKMC

✦ Synopsis

"Lady Violet Bonham Carter was one of the foremost Liberal politicians of her day and the daughter of H.H. Asquith, prime minister 1908-16. To Sir Winston Churchill, her close friend, she was a woman of 'vehement intelligence' whom he placed 'in the first rank of Party orators'. But she was also a writer of distinction, widely acclaimed for her 1965 biography Winston Churchill As I Knew Him. The intended sequel to that book was never written, but here, in extracts from post-war diaries and letters, is the raw material for a worthy successor." "'Winston has many faults', Lady Violet wrote in 1950, 'but he is the one great forest tree that still stands. When I am with him I feel the perspective of history'. She captures that 'perspective' vividly in her journals, which reveal not just Churchill, but virtually all of the leading figures of the day: Clement Attlee, 'feeling the Atlas weight of his responsibility' as prime minister; Anthony Eden, 'accomplishing his own destruction by the suicidal blunder of Suez'; Harold Macmillan, 'not "enjoying" office at all. He feels the decline of power in politicians and indeed of Parliament'; and President Kennedy, 'Above all I had the sense of greatness - in a greater degree than I have felt it about anyone since I first met Winston at the age of 19'." "These are the writings of an active politician with an international standing - an advocate of European union, an opponent of apartheid, a seasoned campaigner for human rights. But above all they are the writings of an English Liberal, striving to save her country from decline and her party from extinction. Violet Bonham Carter ended her days in the House of Lords, overcoming failing health to take her fight for Liberalism at home and abroad into the 'corridors of impotence'. It was the courageous last act in a remarkable life."--Jacket.