Biography’s real duty to the dead is to clarify which are worth making “live.” Plutarch and Boswell are the models. The future of Asquith, though Gladstone’s successor and the last premier ruling the British Empire like a Flavian emperor, is uncertain on the shelf of history. He managed the political war well between “Peers and People” by threatening to create hundreds of Lords; but he was unequal to the Great War. Nor indeed would his successor Lloyd George have done better, if it had not been for Woodrow Wilson’s assistance.
Asquith, by Roy Jenkins. Chilmark, $7.95
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