Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940

Description

A remarkable history of the 'lost generation' of the 1920s - parties, scandal, Jazz, clashing generations and the dark legacy of war. Bright Young People/ Making the most of our youth/ They talk in the Press of our social success/ But quite the reverse is the truth. Noel Coward The Bright Young People were one of the most extraordinary youth cults in British history. A pleasure-seeking band of bohemian party-givers and blue-blooded socialites, they romped through the 1920s gossip columns. Evelyn Waugh dramatised their antics in Vile Bodies and many of them, such as Anthony Powell, Nancy Mitford,Cecil Beaton and John Betjeman, later became household names. Their dealings with the media foreshadowed our modern celebrity culture and even today,we can detect their influence in our cultural life. But the quest for pleasure came at a price. Beneath the parties and practical jokes was a tormented generation, brought up in the shadow of war, whose relationships - with their parents and with each other - were prone to fracture. For many, their progress through the 'serious' Thirties, when the age of parties was over and another war hung over the horizon, led only to drink, drugs and disappointment, and in the case of Elizabeth Ponsonby - whose story forms a central strand of this book - to a family torn apart by tragedy. Moving from the Great War to the Blitz, Bright Young People is both a chronicle of England's 'lost generation' of the Jazz Age, and a panoramic portrait of a world that could accommodate both dizzying success and paralysing failure. Drawing on the writings and reminiscences of the Bright Young People themselves, D.J. Taylor has produced an enthralling social and cultural history, a definitive portrait of a vanished age.

D.J.Taylor is a novelist, critic and acclaimed biographer of William Thackeray and George Orwell (both available in paperback). His Orwell- The Life won the Whitbread Biography of the year for 2003. His most recent books are the Victorian novel Kept- A Victorian Mystery (Chatto, 2006) and The Corinthian Spirit- on the decline of Amateurism in Sport (Yellow Jersey, 2006). He is married with three children and lives in Norwich.

Taylor writes with such skill and aplomb that it's impossible not to be swept along by the intelligence and observations * Guardian * Shrewd and absorbing in his analysis of the way Waugh and Nancy Mitford promoted the world they would soon skewer in fiction * Sunday Times * Moving and always entertaining -- Jane Stevenson * Daily Telegraph * The depth and integrity of Taylor's research can only inspire awe and admiration. * Sunday Express * D J Taylor's enthusiasm, delivered with the zeal of a recent convert, proves there is fascination even in empty living and that the Bright Young Brigade of the 1920s are just as worthy of a book or two as Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Tamara Beckwith, Calum Best and all the flapping 'It-people' of our own generation -- Alexander Waugh * Literary Review *