Did the Prime Minister have an affair with a woman half his age?

As a connoisseur of British political scandals I have long puzzled over one of the most intriguing of all such affairs: did Edwardian Liberal Prime Minister H.H. Asquith have sex with Venetia Stanley, a woman young enough to be his daughter? She certainly took up huge amounts of his time and attention in August 1914 when he should have been exclusively focused on the conflict that became the first world war.

There is no doubt that the veteran PM was a ladies’ man who was notoriously ‘unsafe in taxis

The same question has now engaged the talents of the bestselling thriller writer Robert Harris, whose latest novel Precipice – out later this month – hones in on those vital summer days when Britain hovered on the brink of war, before plunging into the abyss that arguably destroyed European civilisation.

Harris examines the crisis through the prism of Asquith’s relationship with young Venetia, the aristocratic daughter of a Liberal peer, who caught the priapic premier’s eye when he became besotted with her during a Mediterranean cruise in 1912.