Social history has always been my passion: unless you know how people thought, felt and lived, even down to how they dressed and ate, it is often impossible to understand why they acted as they did. And no period is as fascinating to me as the inter-war years; after WW1, the greatest conflict the world had ever seen, the upcoming generations determined to break barriers, discard the last vestiges of what they saw as hidebound custom, to invent new, freer ways of writing, painting, dancing - and to have fun. And for most of this post-war generation, there was nowhere like Paris.
This elegantly written biography helped me to know my subject.
It was especially vivid on what it was like to be the child of an Edwardian hostess, the minimal effect of WW1 on the day-to-day life of Great Britain and the effect of this on later life. It is a model of what a biography should be: thoughtful, clear, interesting, and perceptive.
From Wikipedia: Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class but strongly rejected her family's values, devoting much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the 20th century's most distinguished writers and artists, including Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Tristan Tzara, Ezra Pound and Louis Aragon, who were among her lovers, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Constantin Brâncuşi, Langston Hughes, Man Ray, and William Carlos Williams. MI5 documents reveal that she was involved with Indian socialist leader…
A fascinatingly evocative study of one small quarter of Paris in the Twenties.
Elliot Paul, an American journalist, an intimate of the ‘Lost Generation' first walked into rue de la Huchette in the summer of 1923. "There," he wrote, "I found Paris." This atmospheric study of the life in a cramped street brings to life a cast of characters so vividly that you feel you are living among them.
Elliot Paul first went to France during the first World War where he served as a sergeant in the AEF. It was at the end of the war that he began the long residence in Paris in which he tells in A Narrow Street.
This novel perfectly captures the frenetic pleasure-seeking ethos of the youth of the English upper classes after the horrors of WW1- unsurpsingly, as it is written by one of them.
Evelyn Waugh was one of the Bright Young People, as they became known, who tore round London in sports cars, snatching at policemen’s helmets for the treasure hunts they loved.
Vile Bodies is both a celebration of the hedonism of the young and a warning to those who believe that their license to indulge is infinite, unquestionable and without consequence. A whole host of wonderful characters are introduced throughout Waugh's thought-provoking and satirical story, which follows protagonist Adam from the perils and pitfalls of being a gossip columnist to the trials and tribulations in attempting to secure his marriage to Nine Blount. Roll on an eccentric (verging on senile) potential father-in-law, parties as 10 Downing Street, high times at Shepheard's hotel, where the wine is always flowing (until your bill…
This is peak F. Scott Fitzgerald, a story of love and longing written in a style that relies as much on nuance as flat statement, where not a word is wasted, and the reader joins the narrator as witness of the unfolding drama, with Fitzgerald’s keen observation of place a time sharpening every scene.
As the summer unfolds, Nick is drawn into Gatsby's world of luxury cars, speedboats and extravagant parties. But the more he hears about Gatsby - even from what Gatsby himself tells him - the less he seems to believe. Did he really go to Oxford University? Was Gatsby a hero in the war? Did he once kill a man? Nick recalls how he comes to know Gatsby and how he also enters the world of his cousin Daisy and her wealthy husband Tom. Does their money make them any happier? Do the stories all connect? Shall we come to know…
This three-volume epic that begins in 1918 and ends shortly before its author’s death in 1957 gives an unrivalled picture of the social and political mores that governed a certain section of English society.
Channon, a conscientious Member of Parliament for much of his life, was a crashing snob with a gift for observation and occasional piercing insights into his own character. He knew ‘everybody’ and his accounts of their intimate behavior – and his own – is compelling.
The Sunday Times bestselling edition of Chips Channon's remarkable diaries.
Born in Chicago in 1897, 'Chips' Channon settled in England after the Great War, married into the immensely wealthy Guinness family, and served as Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea from 1935 until his death in 1958. His career was unremarkable. His diaries are quite the opposite. Elegant, gossipy and bitchy by turns, they are the unfettered observations of a man who went everywhere and who knew everybody. Whether describing the antics of London society in the interwar years, or the growing scandal surrounding his close friends Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson…
Paris in the 1920s was the focus of everything that was new and radical in the worlds of art, literature, and design, with a ferment of original ideas and a lack of censorship that drew the young from everywhere - many, like novelist Ernest Hemingway and the poet Mina Loy leaving the more puritan shores of America for the louche glamour of Montparnase café life. At the heart of these interlocking circles moved the beautiful, magnetic Nancy Cunard, who had left home, class and country to live the life she wanted. Muse to half the poets and painters of the age, her lovers ranged from the poet Ezra Pound to the black jazz pianist Henry Crowder.
About myself: As a novelist I’m crazy for detail. I believe it’s the odd and unexpected aspects of life that bring both characters and story worlds to life. This means that I try to be an observer at all times, keeping alert and using all five – and maybe six – senses. My perfect writing morning begins with a dog walk in the woods or on a beach, say, while keeping my senses sharp to the world around me and listening out for the first whisper of what the day’s writing will bring.
This book is a literary historical novel. It is set in Britain immediately after World War II, when people – gay, straight, young, and old - are struggling to get back on track with their lives, including their love lives. Because of the turmoil of the times, the number of losses, and the dangerous and peculiar circumstances people find themselves in, sexual mores have become shaken and stirred.
But what happened after the war, in the time of healing and settling down? This novel examines the emotional, romantic, and sexual lives of three characters searching for a way to proceed.
Love never dies in this novel by “a writer of addictive emotional thrillers” (The Independent).
Told from three perspectives A Particular Man is about love, truth and the unpredictable consequences of loss.
When Edgar dies in a Far East prisoner-of-war camp it breaks the heart of fellow prisoner Starling. In Edgar’s final moments, Starling makes him a promise. When, after the war, he visits Edgar’s family, to fulfil this promise, Edgar's mother Clementine mistakes him for another man.
Her mistake allows him access to Edgar’s home and to those who loved him, stirring powerful and disorientating emotions, and embroiling him…
