MOMENTS OF MEMORY By Herbert Asquith
His eminent father naturally dominates Mr. Asquith's agreeable volume of reminiscences (Hutchinson, 18s.). He recalls the future Prime Minister as a poor but cheerful young barrister playing cricket with his boys in the little garden at Keats Grove, Hampstead, where he lived till his drst wife died in 1891. Asquith eked out his infrequent briefs by writing for The' Spectator and The Economist until as junior to RWsell before the Parnell Commission he made his reputation. The author throws no new light on his father's political career but hints, like Mr. Churchill in his recent volume, that Asquith was hardly
so placid and complacent in temper as other biographers would have us believe. The account of Asquith's overthrow in December, 1916, is all too discreet. The author describes very pleasantly his years at Winchester and Balliol and omits to say that his own Oxford career was nearly as brilliant as that of his father or that of his brother Raymond. The chapters on his War experiences, especially the great retreat of March, 1918, are clear and picturesque, and his account of D. H. Lawrence, whom he knew intimately, is as piquant as it is unexpected. Mr. Asquith makes a bad mistake (p. 200) in saying that Sir John Simon resigned the Home Office at the outbreak of the War.
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