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.
Bright Young Things
Bright Young Things is a thoroughly entertaining non-fiction account of 'the real Downton Abbey', which brings to life the historical backdrop of the series in an informative, fun and engaging book. As one viewer told The New York Times: 'I'm just enjoying the show so much, I thought I needed to get a book about it. And I was watching [the historical scenes] and thinking, I don't know enough about this. So maybe I can learn something in the process.' So step into a time of hot jazz and even hotter all-night dance halls, as Alison Maloney shares the gossip about life in the Roaring Twenties. Read all about it: high society’s scandalous exploits, fresh new fashions, the Charleston dance craze, costume parties, talking movies and, of course, the feisty flapper. With chapters such as Makin' Whoopee, Cocktail Hour and Upstairs, Downstairs, Bright Young Things takes a sweeping look at the changing society of the Jazz Age, as life below stairs vanished forever, loose morals ran riot, and new inventions made it seem anything was possible. Peppered with first-person accounts that convey the spirit of the era in the words of those who lived it, Bright Young Things is a scintillating celebration of a truly iconic decade.
Bright Young People
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.
Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and related agencies appropriations for 1988
Social Dance and the Modernist Imagination in Interwar Britain
Arguing that social dance haunted the interwar imagination, Zimring reveals the powerful figurative importance of music and dance, both in the aftermath of war, and during Britain's entrance into cosmopolitan modernity and the modernization of gender relations. Analysing paintings, films, memoirs, ballet, documentary texts and writings by Modernist authors, Zimring illuminates the ubiquitous presence of social dance in the British imagination during a time of cultural transition and recuperation.
