Margot Asquith
Margot Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith , née Emma Alice Margaret Tennant (born February 2, 1864 in Peeblesshire , † July 28, 1945 ) was a British writer. Asquith was best known as the wife of long-time British Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith and as the author of a much-read memory book ( The Autobiography of Margot Asquith ).
Live and act
Margot Asquith was the eleventh child of the industrialist and politician Charles Clow Tennant and his wife Emma Winsloe. After a sheltered but free childhood, which she spent mostly in her parents' country estate, Tennant was introduced into London society, where she quickly became a fixture. Together with her sister Laura, who married the influential Lord Alfred Lyttelton in 1887, she was the focus of a political and cultural salon for many years, which was called "The Souls" after a mockery of Charles Beresford .
On May 10, 1894, she married the widowed liberal politician Herbert Henry Asquith. The marriage resulted in five children, only two of whom survived infancy: Elizabeth Asquith (* 1897), who married the Romanian Prince Antoine Bibesco in 1919, and the director Anthony Asquith (* 1902).
Margot Asquith was important for the political advancement of her husband insofar as she systematically introduced him to the leading social circles of British society that were open to her in the years after their marriage, thus giving him a second political pillar alongside his influence in the Liberal Party .
After Herbert Asquith was appointed Prime Minister in 1908, Margot Asquith took a central place in British public life. Apart from the “usual” representative functions of the Prime Minister's wife, Margot Asquith was particularly noticeable for the energetic manner with which she tried to get her husband to share her opinions on political and social issues. In addition, her brash and outward manner was viewed with displeasure by broad sections of the British press and public.
During the First World War , several public disputes by Margot Asquith contributed to the diminishing of her husband's standing in the opinion of the British people and in the political class, which indirectly contributed to the deterioration of his political position, which in December 1916 as Asquith's fall Prime Minister ended. Margot Asquith caused outrage among the British public, for example, when she visited German soldiers in a British Army POW camp or when she accused her stepson Herbert of being drunk on a visit to his sick quarters while he was actually suffering from a war neurosis as a result of an artillery bombing.
After her husband's death in 1927, Asquith lived at the Savoy Hotel and Thurloe Place in Kensington. Since the late 1920s she has appeared in the UK with a number of memory books. These writings are often used to this day, especially in English historiography, as source material for academic papers on the political processes of the years from 1894 to 1927, and in particular from 1905 to 1918/1922, in which they were the wife of finance - or the prime minister and opposition leader had witnessed a multitude of important political events and decisions in close proximity. Some of the opinions she made in her memoirs, as well as various of her claims, caused public controversy while she was still alive. For example Margot Asquith's violent attacks on David Lloyd George , her husband's successor in the office of Prime Minister, or her reminiscence that Winston Churchill , then Minister of the Navy in the Asquith government, on the evening of August 4, 1914 (the day the British declared war on Germany ) entered the cabinet room on Downing Street with a happy smile, unlike any other minister.
Fonts
- Autobiography , p. l. 1920.
- Places & Persons , London 1925.
- The Autobiography of Margot Asquith. Political Events and Celebrities , London 1933.
Web links
- Newspaper article about Margot Asquith in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Asquith, Margot |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Oxford and Asquith, Emma Alice Margaret Asquith Countess of (full name); Tennant, Emma Alice Margaret (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British writer and wife of British Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 2, 1864 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Peeblesshire |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 28, 1945 |