Bright Young People

Oct 10, 2024 9:30 PM

Author:D J Taylor

Bright Young People

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.

Reviews

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

A spirited and nostalgic book...a giddy ride through a lost world of overindulgent gaiety and the next best thing to being at the parties oneself'

—— Scotland on Sunday

His fascinating study of hedonism, futility and fracture... a complex study of family, fear and breakdown

—— New Statesman

This enjoyably meandering history

—— The New Yorker

The tone is light and Moore a delightful writer

—— London Lite

A live and amusing... interesting and entertaining read

—— TNT Magazine

For any biographer this would be a dream of a life, but Snyder is exceptional in bringing not only a vast expertise to the subject, but also an elegant style and gift for narrative.

—— Christopher Hart , The Sunday Times

An engaging portrait of a little-known and puzzling character

—— Ian Pinder , Guardian

The talented historian Timothy Snyder recounts an intriguing life-history against the turbulent backdrop of east-central Europe in the first half of the 20th century

—— History Magazine

Timothy Snyder is not only one of the leading authorities on Central European history writing today, he is also an elegant stylist, with a talent for storytelling - a wonderful combination

—— Anne Applebaum

It reads like Sovietology rendered by John le Carré

—— Timothy Snyder

The book is well written with flashes of mordant humour and sufficient records of personal foibles and institutional stupidity to keep the reader going through some dreadful moments of human history

—— Political Studies Review

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