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    Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age
    Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age
    Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age
    Ebook501 pages7 hours

    Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age

    By D.J. Taylor

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    D.J. Taylor's Bright Young People offers a scintillating portrait of 1920s London and the birth of the cult of celebrity.

    Before the media circus of Britney, Paris, and our modern obsession with celebrity, there were the Bright Young People, a voraciously pleasure-seeking band of bohemian party-givers and blue-blooded socialites who romped through the gossip columns of 1920s London. Evelyn Waugh immortalized their slang, their pranks, and their tragedies in his novels, and over the next half century, many—from Cecil Beaton to Nancy Mitford and John Betjeman—would become household names.

    But beneath the veneer of hedonism and practical jokes was a tormented generation, brought up in the shadow of war. Sparkling talent was too often brought low by alcoholism and addiction. Drawing on the virtuosic and often wrenching writings of the Bright Young People themselves, the biographer and novelist D. J. Taylor has produced an enthralling account of an age of fleeting brilliance.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 6, 2009
    ISBN9781429958950
    Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age
    Author

    D.J. Taylor

    D.J. Taylor has written twelve novels, including English Settlement (1996), which won a Grinzane Cavour Prize,Trespass (1998) and Derby Day(2011), both of which were long-listed for the Booker Prize, Kept (2006), a U.S. Publishers' Weekly Book of the Year, and The Windsor Faction (2013), joint winner of the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. His non-fiction includes Orwell: The Life, winner of the 2003 Whitbread Prize for Biography, The Prose Factory: Literary Life in England Since 1918 (2016) and Lost Girls: Love, War and Literature 1939-1951 (2019). His most recent books are a collection of short stories, Stewkey Blues (2022), and Critic at Large: Essays and Reviews: 2010-2022 (2023). His new biography, Orwell: The New Life, was published in 2023. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Norwich with his wife, the novelist Rachel Hore.

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    Reviews for Bright Young People

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      Throughout much of the 1920s, Londoners had a front-row seat to the antics of a small group of socialites about town. These young men and women staged lavish parties, disrupted activities with scavenger hunts and other stunts, and provided fodder for gossip columnists and cartoonists. This group, dubbed the 'Bright Young People,' was fictionalized in novels, recounted in memoirs, and is now the subject of D. J. Taylor's collective history of their group.

      An accomplished author, Taylor provides an entertaining account of the group. He describes its members - which included such people as Stephen Tennant, Elizabeth Ponsonby, Brian Howard, Bryan Guinness, and Diana Mitford - and the antics that often attracted so much attention. Yet his scope is also broadened to include people such as Cecil Beaton and Evelyn Waugh, socially on the fringe of the group and yet important figures whose interactions with them prove highly revealing. Through their works and the sometimes obsessive coverage they received on the society pages he reconstructs the relationships and the events that captivated the public's attention.

      From all of this emerges a portrait of a phenomenon that was in many ways a unique product of its time. In the aftermath of the demographic devastation of the First World War, the 1920s was a decade that saw the celebration of youth, all of whom grew up in the shadow of a conflict that was the dominant experience of men and women just a few years older than them. The survivors lived in a world where the older generations were discredited and traditional social structures faced increasing economic pressures. In this respect, the Bright Young People represented a garish defiance of the old order and a celebration of life, yet one driven by an undercurrent of sadness and sense of loss.

      Taylor's account is infused with both sympathy and insight. At points his narrative degenerates into descriptions of one party after another, when the people threaten to blur into a single generic stereotype, but he succeeds in conveying something of the flavor of the era. From the photos included, the reader can see the fun the young men and women smiling and hamming it up as they pose for the camera, but for what lay behind their expressions readers should turn to this book.
    • 4/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed this moving and informative account of the 1920s British band of pleasure-seeking bohemians and blue blooded socialites that comprised the "Bright Young People". D.J. Taylor's fascinating book explores the main events and the key players, throughout the 1920s, 1930s, World War Two and into the post-WW2 era.I encountering many names that I was already quite familiar with (e.g. Cecil Beaton, Elizabeth Ponsonby, the Jungman sisters, Patrick Balfour, Diana and Nancy Mitford, Brian Howard, Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh, Cyril Connolly, Henry Yorke, and many more) having read other excellent accounts of the era. Theses include Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead, The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family, The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties, 1919-1940, and The Long Week-end: A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-39.Elizabeth Ponsonby's story looms large in this book, as D.J. Taylor had access to her parents' diaries. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, she was a staple in the gossip columns who seized upon the Bright Young People's adventures and reported them with a mixture of reverence and glee. There was plenty to report: practical jokes, treasure hunts, fancy dress parties, stealing policemen's helmets, dancing all night at the Ritz and so on. In a sense this is what the 1920s is best remembered for, and for some it must have felt right, after the trauma of World War One, and with Victorian values in decline, for young people to enjoy themselves. However, beneath the laughter and the cocktails lurk some less jolly narratives.D.J. Taylor manages to dig beneath the glittering surface where for every success story (Evelyn Waugh and Cecil Beaton both launched very successful careers via the opportunities the Bright Young People scene afforded them) there were also tales of failure and tragedy. Some Bright Young People managed to adapt and prosper, others either continued their 1920s lifestyles or were forever trapped by their gilded youths.Elizabeth Ponsonby provides the ultimate cautionary tale. She made a half-hearted attempt at acting, and later took a short-lived job as a dress-shop assistant, but basically drank to excess, gave parties and practically bankrupted her parents, who fretted helplessly. "It hurts us to see you getting coarse in your speech & outlook in life," her mother wrote to Elizabeth in 1923, suggesting "you ought to enlarge your sphere of enjoyment - not only find happiness in night clubs & London parties & a certain sort of person." This sounds like any parent's out-of-touch lament, but the Ponsonbys had genuine cause for concern. The tone of Vile Bodies captures Elizabeth Ponsonby's routines as glimpsed in her parents' diaries. In Vile Bodies Waugh states the Bright Young People "exhibit naïveté, callousness, insensitivity, insincerity, flippancy, a fundamental lack of seriousness and moral equilibrium that sours every relationship and endeavour they are involved in". A harsh and telling view from an eye-witness,and probably closer to the truth than the more hagiographic accounts of the era.As I state at the outset, I really enjoyed this book, and despite having read a few similar accounts, I discovered plenty of new information and this has added to my understanding of this endlessly fascinating era. I also found it surprisingly moving - the diary entries by Elizabeth Ponsonby's parents are heartbreaking. Recommended for anyone interested in the era of the "Bright Young People".
    • 2/5
      Bright Young People is the story of a particular group of young people who lived in London in the 1920s and ‘30s. Born at around the turn of the century, they were well connected and, for the most part, wealthy. They were known for the outrageous lifestyles they led, holding themed parties until dawn and performing tricks upon each other. The Bright Young People relied largely on the press to publicize their activities, and they included, among others, Nancy and Diana Mitford, Bryan Guinness, Evelyn Waugh, Brian Howard, Brenda Dean Paul, Cecil Beaton, and Elizabeth Ponsonby.The book is divided into thirteen chapters, with little interludes focusing on specific people or things (on is on all the books Brian Howard never wrote). The book is a bit disorganized; the chapters don’t seem to be arranged in any others, and the interludes, rather than being enlightening, hinder the flow of the book. The book is also a little unfocused; al large part of it is devoted to Elizabeth Ponsonby and her fraught relationship with her parents (chronicled extensively in their diaries). It’s almost as though Taylor meant to write a biography of Elizabeth, realized he didn’t have enough material to write it, and expanded the book to focus on all the Bright Young Things of the period. There’s also a lot about Brenda Dean Paul’s drug addiction and weight loss; but in contrast, there’s not a whole lot about any of the other people of the “movement—“ not even on the Mitfords or Evelyn Waugh. There’s also a dearth of information on the Bright Young Things’ relationships with each other, which was disappointing to me.There’s also not much on the parties themselves, and the author doesn’t convey much of the fun atmosphere that those Bright young Things had; instead, he seems more focused on analyzing the period and its implications (“not seeing the trees for the forest” syndrome). As a result, the tone of the book tends to be a bit stilted and—dare I say it? dull. There are lots of plot summaries of the novels of Bright Young People (if you haven’t read Highland Fling, A Dance to the Music of Time, or Vile Bodies, here are the cliff notes), and the author tends to rely on these as sources for this book. On the other hand, the book does an excellent job of highlighting the disparity between the generations: the fluidity of the new generation versus the more stolid, late-Victorian generation of their parents. In addition, the book does inspire me to want to read Vile Bodies and Highland Fling...
    • 4/5
      This is the story of a group of privileged young people who captivated the London press with their antics in the 1920s. It starts out slow - Taylor actually spends a chapter pondering why they were called the "Bright Young People." Once it kicks into gear, around chapter 4, it's quite enjoyable as tales of people with pretensions to talent, pretensions in general, out-sized egos and a deep interest in clothes go. The best parts are the extracts from the diaries and letters of the parents of one of the BYP. The Ponsonbys were horrified by their daughter's activities, her lack of ambition, and her profligate spending and their observations are both acute and frequently hilarious. When Dorothea Ponsonby writes, apropos of one of her daughter's friends: "I can't look at him. He is like an obscure footman" she is forging new ground in put downs. In fact, I'm tempted to make this my go-to insult for the next month. Taylor is upfront about the fact that the majority of People in question aren't terribly impressive upon closer inspection. (Except in their networking and log-rolling, which is truly notable.) Yet several of them have already been the subject of biographies, (entitled "Portrait of a Failure" and "Serious Pleasures", no less) Taylor is interested in what made these people newsworthy, what inspired them and what impact they have left on society. The fascination with them seems almost perverse. It's not borne of respect or admiration. It's more like straining one's neck to see the remains of the car crash. Once past their glory days a surprising number of the BYP move into fascism or communism. There's a joke to be made here about being addicted to parties but I'm going to skip it. Better jokes are made about this by Taylor himself and Cyril Connelly in "Where Engels Fears to Tread." This is an enjoyable read for any fan of biography or early 20th century European history.
    • 3/5
      Very interesting history in the terms of catching the feeling, ambience, and mood of the times. But I kept wanting the author to tell me why these vapid people were important enough to spend time with. I enjoyed it, but I couldn't help feeling that there were other books I would have enjoyed more and this just, in the end, wasn't worth my time.

    Book preview

    Bright Young People - D.J. Taylor

    CHAPTER ONE

    FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE

    Human nature being what it is, trivial and surface manifestations of revolutionary exuberance will always have a fascination for the average reader.

    —DOUGLAS GOLDRING, The Nineteen-Twenties (1945)

    The 1920s were the great age of the press sensation. The defrocked vicar, the nightclub raid, the genteel murder, the man swallowed whole by the whale and regurgitated onto the sand bleached white by its gastric juices—all these were served up by mass-market newspapers as indiscriminately as a packet of hundreds and thousands. Middle-class readers who opened their copies of the Daily Mail on July 26, 1924, found a yet more enticing phenomenon: the discovery, alive and kicking on the streets of central London, of nothing less than a brand-new youth cult. chasing clues, the report proclaimed. new society

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