The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm

by Juliet Nicolson

The Perfect Summer chronicles a glorious English summer a century ago, when the world was on the cusp of irrevocable change. Through the tight lens of four months, Juliet Nicolson’s rich storytelling gifts rivet us with the sights, colors, and feelings of a bygone era. That summer of 1911 a new king was crowned and the aristocracy was at play, bounding from one house party to the next. But perfection was not for all. Cracks in the social fabric were showing. The country was brought to a standstill by industrial strikes. Temperatures rose steadily to more than 100 degrees; by August deaths from heatstroke were too many for newspapers to report. Drawing on material from intimate and rarely seen sources and narrated through the eyes of a series of exceptional individuals--among them a debutante, a choirboy, a politician, a trade unionist, a butler, and the queen-- The Perfect Summer is a vividly rendered glimpse of the twilight of the Edwardian era.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature, World War I, Edwardian, Historical, 20th Century

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Juliet Nicolson is the author of 'The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm' and 'The Great Silence: Britain From the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age.' She read English at Oxford University and has worked in publishing in both the UK and the United States. She has two daughters, and lives with her husband in Sussex.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the subject matter of this book, but about three chapters in, I decided it just had to go back to the library because the writing was driving me crazy. An editor I knew once said that one of his reporters seemed to organize his stories by cutting his notes into pieces and pasting them randomly on the page. Juliet Nicolson is guilty of something similar. While she tries to organize this book chronologically, she seems to lack almost all sense of transition, so you can be reading about the young Winston Churchhill at one point and suddenly be treated to the outfits worn by a famous ingenue. Snip snip paste paste. Too disconcerting.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have lukewarm feelings about this book. At times it was very interesting and I gained a general understanding of the culture of England in 1911.

However, I felt that this book would have benefitted from some tighter editing. The author jumped between topics with no warning. I found myself having to go back several times and re-read paragraphs because I couldn't figure out how we got from one topic to the next. In many cases, there was no rhyme or reason as to where we ended up.

This book was obviously very well researched, but I felt that the author at times added historical "tidbits" simply because she found them, not because they contributed to the book. "Characters" were introduced and then never mentioned again. There was no sense of closure, and very little tying the information together other than the fact that all these events occurred in England during the summer of 1911.

An interesting, although frustrating, read.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely, thought-provoking portrait of England before the First World War. Like 1599, it is a biography not of a person but of a year. I loved the way it brought together people whose names we all know (Churchill, George V, Nijinsky, Rupert Brooke, Virginia Woolf) with others less well known, authors like Elinor Glyn and Vita Sackville West (the author's grandmother), early union leaders Ben Tillett and Mary Macarthur, tattle-tale butler Eric Horne, and Churchill's fierce political enemy but dearest personal friend F.E. Smith.

The style is compulsively readable, full of clever juxtapositions that give a wonderful sense of the time. It's a bit like the style of Harper's Index, the news of the day that, in sum, gives a sense of the day.

And as the granddaughter of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, Juliet Nicolson seems to have access to some fabulous stories and materials that are humble in their content but piquant, and used in devastating juxtaposition to the news of the day.

This is a book that made me laugh out loud, and frequently read passages to anyone around me who would listen.

P.S. I'm a sucker for forgotten authors because I find that the "second tier" books often give a better sense of the day than the classics that have stood the test of time. They are of their time, passed over because they are "dated," but it is that very fact that makes them a clearer window into the past.

Now I have to dig up those Vita Sackville-West and Elinor Glyn novels I have buried somewhere in my library :-)

[Oodles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using diaries and other records, Ms. Nicholson guides the reader through 4 months of England in 1911 - the hottest summer on record. King George's Coronation was held that year and his wife, Mary confronts her fears of being Queen. Her mother-in-law refuses to move out to the Dowager House. Winston Churchill and F.E. Smith are enemies on the floor of Parliament but the best of friends otherwise. Virginia Smith (later Woolf), Rupert Brooke, Lytton Strachey, Rudyard Kipling, and other poets and writers are living their lives. The younger set is acting up. The dockworkers are striking. It was a fascinating snapshot of "the calm before the storm" of WWI and I found it well written and sublime.

[Jill H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book when it was first published and just got around to reviewing it, after a quick re-read. I have since read The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War by this author and loved it, so with hindsight, I can say that I didn't like this one as well but still give it four stars.

Nicolson gives us a look at the summer months of 1911 when England was suffering one of its greatest heat waves. Tempers were short as Churchill, as Home Secretary, aggravated the Parliament; the general strike disrupted trade; Queen Mary really wasn't too fond of being Queen; the "Souls" were the epitome of high society silliness; and the House of Lords was stripped of its power of veto. In other words, events were occurring and attitudes were being shaped that would color the future of England which was little suspecting the war that was just over the horizon, both literally and figuratively. It is a social history of interest.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable, although slightly odd look at the long hot summer of 1911. There are lots of interesting facts and insights into daily life; mainly for the upper classes and their servants. There were also some interesting leads to other books and references to follow and find. The focus is mainly on the upper classes with the Royal Family and members of the government having some prominence, along with some of their wives and daughters. These are predictable and confirm that the sex lives and loves of the rich and famous continue as always. There are interesting insertions about the national dock strike and the trade unionist Ben Tillett.
The book felt a little disjointed with a lack of focus and there are sections which felt superfluous and over descriptive. However there are fascinating snippets of information and it is an easy read

[Diane Barnes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very disappointed in this book. The writing was not very good. It reminded me of a 7th grader assigned to write a report, reading the encyclopedia, and listing the facts and pertinent information with no interest whatsoever, just to get it done. In fact I did not finish the last 3 chapters, and quickly skimmed the ones I did read. The sense of the lifestyles and politics and clothing styles were all very familiar to me just from watching Downton Abbey. There was one chapter describing the lives of the servants, but the rest was mainly a name-dropping narrative about the wretched excesses and immoral behavior of the ruling class. And I'm sorry, but for a person living in Charleston, SC, any tales of people going mad and having seizures from the unbearable heat of 85° is just laughable. Not recommended to anyone who cares about quality of writing, and I'm still trying to figure out where all the glowing reviews came from.

[Kit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but a bit all over the place, and some of the language used with respect to Romani people was offensive.

[Jill Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

about a very interesting summer. The Summer of 1914 has been explored in many books, most notably by Barbara Tuchman, but here, Ms Nicolson writes about a very important season a few years earlier. The weather was hot, the new King and Queen were being coronated, and society was in a gentle upheaval. Edward VII's death the previous year truly ended the Victorian age and all sorts of "new things" were being done by members of all levels of society.

Nicolson writes easily about the time and the people. One incident she writes about made me chuckle. On page 167 she mentions Hwfa Williams being shot and wounded "in the Mall by 'an overworked telegraph clerk whose brain had given way under strain'". "Overworked telegraph clerks" then, "overworked postal workers" now. Things haven't changed so much from then til now!

[Alex Sarll]

110 years is a weird span of time – right on the advancing wavefront of oblivion. Technically, it's within living memory – but there's no one person* you could have a decent conversation with at both ends. Whereas when this book came out, 15 years ago (and not 10, as I'd assumed), which I still think of as making it a recent publication, there'd have been hundreds, thousands, who fit the bill. Now, though, it's very much an attempt to catch a lost age in amber. "The season from May to September 1911 was one of the high sunlit meadows of English history. It was a time when England – rich, happy, self-indulgent and at least slightly decadent – was most contentedly itself. And yet the exuberance and self-congratulatory spirit of those few months was in many ways illusory." Almost an Adam Curtis opening, isn't it? Except better, obviously. Not that Nicolson's prose is without its own occasional lapses, but as you'd expect from a Bloomsbury descendant, it's more a case of slipping into Tatler-ese, or getting a little too utterly utterly. Mostly, though, she does a wonderful job of stirring the ashes into a seductive semblance of life, setting solid biographical and historical facts against "the background sounds of Ragtime and Stravinsky, humming bees and the fizz of champagne". The story is told relay race fashion, each chapter centred on a different figure of the time, and if some of them are the royals, writers and general gilded souls the title suggests, they don't get it all their own way. This was, after all, a year when the Shop Act and the Parliament Bill were chipping away at the long-established stratifications of English life. So yes, we spend time floating elegantly around with Virginia Stephen, soon to be Woolf; with Rupert Brooke, already seen as some half-pagan incarnation of youth; with the impossibly glamorous Lady Diana Manners (and of course John Julius Norwich's mum would be a great society beauty, given to mild scandal, who once beat Anna Pavlova in a fancy dress competition). But here too are the far more popular and less respected writer Elinor Glyn; pioneering union man Ben Tillett; and ambivalently embittered butler Eric Horne. Dotted around them, a world of supporting detail takes in the name of the person still being punished with 'loo', the Russian ballet costumes impounded for being suspiciously revolutionary, and the delicious detail of Beecham's pills being advertised with a suffragette – who knew the Spectacle had commodified revolution so early? I had also been unaware that the fashionable cleavage of the time was partly possible through garments being supported by rings clamped on the nipples; in amongst several outbursts of genteel raciness here, that still probably makes the top three of 'Oh, I say!', alongside the mention of the magnum bonum potato, and the unfortunately named Mr Piddlecock.

I suspect I have a much higher tolerance for moneyed decadence than many people I know (one of my big objections to the modern rich is that they mostly seem to be so thoroughly boring and/or vulgar about it; not a trace of élan about them). But all the same, there are some moments which are breathtaking for all the wrong reasons. In the literal sense that would go for reminders of how poor hygiene was in 1911, even among the rich, but the most horrific detail was Princess Kawanako of Honolulu's cape at one of those same grand balls Lady Diana Manners attended. Part of a costume intended to recall Honolulu's flag, it was made of yellow feathers, enough to extinguish the luckless species of bird whose heads supplied one feather each. Monstrous, undoubtedly – and yet how many more species are we wiping out now without even a cloak to show for it? Similarly, when the PM of 1911 leaves a nurse at death's door, it is at least only one nurse thanks to a spot of careless driving, not dozens on account of systemic incompetence and corruption. Over and over there's a sense of 1911 mirroring 2021, but the comparison is rarely to our advantage. It was a time of great inequality, with gaps on shelves and the poor starving – but this was in large part down to a successful strike which would ameliorate that inequality and lead to a marked increase in union power, not self-inflicted fuck-ups like a botched Brexit. There was a sense of a new age dawning after a time in stasis, but it was ushered in by a coronation, not coronavirus. The papers ran a column featuring deaths of heat, only discontinued once they grew too many to be remarkable, and succeeded by one featuring deaths of water – but these were thought of as anomalous events, not the first few names on lists that are just going to keep getting longer every year. For all that 'Dancing Into Shadow' of the subtitle, there's at least something enviable about their ignorance; despite rumblings in Agadir, most people then could be legitimately unaware that their society was headed for a terrible reckoning. Lucky bastards.

*Or, notes the part of me still fascinated by the likes of Fulcanelli and St Germain, nobody officially recognised.

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set against the backdrop of the long hot Summer of 1911 we see English life through the eyes of several different people including

* Queen Mary (who's husband George V was to be crowned the new King in May) and who 'had never felt so lonely'
* Politician Winston Churchill
* Lady Diana Manners (a debutante) who was looking forward to a Summer of relentless partying
* War Poet Siegfried Sasson who, in the middle of the summer, said 'We seemed to have forgotten that there was such a thing as the future'
* Butler Eric Horne who thought some of the noblemen and women he worked for had 'a kink in the brain'
* Trade Unionist Ben Tillett who almost brought the country to its knees through a series of industrial strikes


This is an absolutely absorbing look at the England of yesteryear, we see how life was changing especially for the under-class in society, they were beginning to question their role and the rules they were governed by.

Juliet Nicolson's detailed research could not be faulted and at the end of it I almost felt as if I had lived through the heatwave. I loved so many of the fascinating facts she gave us. Thinking about the present furore over many UK MP's expenses claims I found this nugget -

The proposed salary of £400 a year for Members of Parliament was not scheduled to come into effect until August: traditionally, MP's had funded themselves, from a private income or earnings outside the House of Commons.

How times have changed!!

Another entertaining fact regarding the rise of the picture-houses -

Some cinemas had tea-houses, and special sitting-out rooms reserved for ladies only. A reassuring manager in a tailcoat - like a maitre d'hotel in a restaurant or a butler opening a front door - would greet the audience as they arrived.


What a wonderful picture she painted of the everyday lives and loves of so many people, of their struggles just to survive in contrast to the upper-classes bored lives filled with playing bridge and partying.

My only criticism with The Perfect Summer is of the very lengthy paragraphs, some were almost a page long, of which many could have been edited better to make it easier to read.

However, if, like me, you love reading about the Victorian/Edwardian/Georgian way of life and can't resist (boring)enlightening anyone within listening distance of your amazing historical knowhow, you're going to want to add this to your collection.

[Lynn Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad I read this book, but I had very mixed feelings. On the one hand, the author does give readers some vivid glimpses into various people's lives during the summer of 1911 and it really did give me a picture of what life would have been like for an upper-class English person of that time. The book purports to give a more universal portrait of that moment in time just before the First World War. However, there is a definite slant in favor of the ruling class and their stories get both more pages and more in-depth treatment than anything else here.

That being said, I did enjoy learning more about Winston Churchill in the earlier days of his career, and getting glimpses of the family dynamics of the royal family following the death of Edward VII. The author of this history does a good job of capturing the mood of a society on the verge of change.

However, I did have one other quibble with this book. The author appears to take it for granted that readers will already be familiar with the persons and events she discusses. While I knew who most of the players in this book were, I still had to spend a fair amount of time on Wikipedia filling in the blanks. Perhaps more problematic, though, was the fact that while various events are discussed throughout the narrative, readers are often left to research for themselves why some of these things might be significant. As a reader, I longed for a bit more detail.

[Alix Stricklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm giving this a 5-star, even though this is a new writer. The writing style resembles stream of consciousness during the transitions, which is the weakest link in the book. However, the writer really makes you feel the concerns surrounding each social group she covers. This really tied this period of history together for me. I've studied different aspects of this period, but this is the first writer that I've read that has covered so many social elements in parallel - really helped my understanding of the country at that time. I also appreciate that she reported without apparent bias either for or against any particularly social group. This really helped me understand the push and pull going on within the social groups, between the social groups, politically within the country, and the major external conflict with Germany as well. Great book! I'd love to see her write more!

[Arabella · Rating 1 out of 5]

A mishmash of historical trivia and some impactful events with the only common element being they happened in the same few months in the same country. While the writer tries to create a synthesized perspective, it feels like she just read through one daily newpaper after another from that period and threw miscellaneous items that caught her eye onto paper. (The book is written chronologically, with chapter such as "Early June" and "Late June", which doesn't help). She provides some interesting details of life at different strata of society, but can't also help bringing her own 21st century perspective and biases to bear. And her "I saw that one coming a mile off" last paragraph's mention of Titanic was cringe-worthy.

[Marsha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I am both a history buff and an Anglophile, so this was the answer to two of my favorite wishes. Because Nicolson was related to some of the historical characters in the book, she made the history live with intimate stories and feelings. I had known some of the English history mentioned, but the information about the strike situation was new to me. I also liked that she included information about the arts of the time; the Russian ballet, English poets and academicians and wonderful details about architecture. Of course, following the parties and social gossip and activities of the London 'season' were absolutely my favorite. The politics of the time, including the Irish question, tied everything together to make a perfect book about that perfect summer.

[Isabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, written by the grand daughter of Vita Sackville-West, focuses on 5 months in 1911 (May-September). Why should it interest us? It covers an unnaturally hot summer in which the temperatures soar to 85-100F, a drought ensues, national strikes shut down many industries, the docks and the railways, children walk out on their classes in protest and Germany begins it's move towards 1914.
The book doesn't focus on just one class - it witnesses the summer through the eyes of aristocrats, their servants, factory workers, union leaders, politicians, artists, poets and children. It's fascinating for those of us who enjoy slipping back into the past and trying to understand who we are by reading about who we were.
I highly recommend this book.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this more than I did -- the material is catnip, but it never quite gels. The chronological arrangement necessitates a fair amount of skipping around between characters and places, leading to confusion and odd juxtapositions. More curiously, the stories Nicolson tells undermine her title. The summer sounds far from perfect; too hot, too dry, beset with labor unrest and worries about war with Germany.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I expected this book to read like a story, describing one "perfect" summer in England before the storm picked up and finally carried away so many of the young men who had danced their way through 1911. Unfortunately, it read more like a textbook or a long list of who did what and when, without a continuing narrative thread to weave it all together. I grew weary of it about 1/4 of the way through the book and decided to put it down.

[Lolakay · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was _really_ looking forward to this book but was totally disappointed. It read at times like a really boring diary and at times like silly society pages. I guess it was building a mood, but not a mood I was into.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book because it covers a time period in history you don’t see much of in modern literature. While there were entertaining passages, the book was too choppy and hard to follow at times. They were also some tedious passages that I had to skim because they were very uninteresting to me.

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non-fiction about the lives of people in England before WWI. I liked it but it didn't hold my attention completely.

[Debra Govier · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really well researched book, it focuses on the long hot English summer of 1911 and what life was like for people from all walks of life. From Queen Mary, anxious about her husband's upcoming coronation, to the impoverished factory workers striking to get a wage they could live on.
Using diary extracts, letters and newspaper reports of the day it gives a clear picture of life at that time.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

Utter rubbish and drivel banging on, and on, in an interminable wank fest, over that ghastly Edwardian era of brutal empire and mass poverty that supported the very few fat men smoking huge cigars and equally fat women in huge hats, which aside from being ugly were ravaging the tropical bird populations throughout the world, and also were hideous. For some reason the English want to read about the days of empire, when they got to wear stupid clothes and force the rest of the world to pay for the diamonds that decorated the 'imperial state crown'. Of course not all English people could enjoy the glories of the 'Edwardian' age, in fact maybe 5% got a place at the trough where the goodies were made available. But then what an artistic era Edwardian Englad was!

Germany may have had 'The Blue Rider Group' and the Austrian Hapsburg empire 'The Secession Movement' but England had had the Pre-Raphaelites since 1848! How often do you have to show Johnny Foreigner that you are the top dog in the artistic field? (please note I have avoided mentioning France).

Books like this simply enrage me for the banality of what is in them and what it says about those who read them. It is like printed flatulence.

[Ashley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Juliet Nicholson's The Perfect Summer had promise, but it didn't fulfill my expectations. I was looking for a book that chronicled the summer, but had an argument. Nicholson failed to present a lucid historical argument and because of this, the book meandered.

I was not captivated and it took me far too long to finish the book. I had to put it down only to pick it back up weeks or months later. As a history major, I was expecting to enjoy this novel and learn something about British society in the era leading up to the First World War. I did to a point; however, there were too many details. The book needed serious editing. There was no clear argument or narrative path. I did not understand why there were so many jumps between "characters" and could not keep track of what everybody was doing. The details needed to be cut. The argument needed to be more concise and there should have been a reason why certain people were grouped together.

Overall, this book is not scholarly enough to be considered an academic source and not engaging enough for me to recommend it to non scholarly readers. An interesting topic ruined by poor editing.

[Arwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolutely magnificent collection of wonderful tidbits of information about a single summer, which comes together as a sharp-eyed portrait of a culture and place. Nicholson mixes gossip and statistics with quotes from queens, butlers, socialites, socialists, and poets, to give a well-rounded sense of England in that turbulent summer of 1911. The culture was changing with lightning speed; technological progress had eroded the age-old truce between the landed gentry and the poor masses, and the rules no longer held true. (A cruel heat wave and a sense of impending war didn't help.)

All in all, this is a fascinating and wonderful book, although I would have liked endnotes or at least a bit more context for some of the more obscure quotations (just how did Nicholson know exactly what Sigfried Sassoon's groom was thinking?).

[Gabriele Wills · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the privileged, 1911 was the last golden year of the Edwardian era in Britain. Juliet Nicolson, granddaughter of author Vita Sackville-West, delightfully evokes the ennui, scandals, and excess of that blisteringly hot summer when the English “danced on the edge of the abyss”. By focusing on the lives of the shy new Queen of England, the young, ambitious Winston Churchill, the beautiful, audacious debutante, Lady Diana Manners, the naughty, extravagant aristocracy, an observant, enterprising butler, poets, writers, painters, strikers, and others, Nicolson illuminates a Britain of extremes. If war clouds were not yet all that evident, social unrest certainly was. One can’t help but realize how drastically life was about to change for all these people, as well as the nation. Rich with the details of everyday life and intriguing events, The Perfect Summer is as engaging as a novel.

[Leslie Zampetti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nicolson's eagerly awaited exploration of the Summer of 1911 is interesting, entertaining in places, even - but quite scattershot. The threads never quite come together in this erratically woven recounting of the political, social, and economic climate in one of England's hottest summers just preceding the First World War.

A familiarity, if not long acquaintance, with the many of the leading characters of the day is desirable, as Nicolson's swift transitions leave little room for introductions. Queen Mary, at least, is given a proper introduction, but then left to shift for herself for much of the rest of the book. While several personae are returned to throughout the book, none is truly accorded the place of protagonist.

The Perfect Summer well may have benefited either from a non-chronological narrative or a tighter editing for the reader to truly appreciate Nicolson's research and writing.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

To me, this book had a lot of promise and an intriguing premise -- an historical account of English society in the summer before World War I broke out. England was experiencing an unusual summer in that it was sunny and warm...possibly too warm. The book jacket promised insights to various societal levels but I felt like the book focused primarily on the upper crust, which wasn't as interesting to me. I liked the chapter that focused on Churchill and his main political rival...I think I would've enjoyed a book on the politics during that time period more or perhaps reading the tell-all written by the butler who appeared in this one. Maybe I read it too fast; maybe I didn't pay close enough attention to the details. The author had clearly done a lot of research and had some unique sources (possibly because of her family connections)...but I just didn't connect with the material.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd never heard of this book until I saw it advertised by the publisher in the previous book I enjoyed. The subject fascinated me and I expected to learn more about the shift from the class system of upstairs downstairs fame to a blurring of the roles. A biography of a summer was an interesting format. But it is terribly written, little more than a reporter's notebook of jotted facts without transition. And the vast majority of the book relays boring facts about fashion and hair style of the rich and famous. Trouble with the striking workers was portrayed as only single paragraphs at the end of each chapter. That only changed with the last quarter of the book with a little more about the working class but very little. I think it was the storyline following the newly introduced Leonard Woolf to Virginia Stephens that influenced me to give the second star.

[Kaethe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edwardian England is my favorite time period: before the upheaval and tragedy of the first WW, but with enough elements of modern life to make it imaginable. Nicolson does a lovely job of letting us in to the lives of a few Edwardian notables, writers, artists, politicians, and activists in that magical time out of The Wind in the Willows when no one seemed to care what the children got up to, and when adults were trying out new ideas amidst fabulous wealth or squalor.

I'd expect Downton Abbey fans to be attracted, despite the hideous cover that looks faded and dull and has three tiny images.

Library copy.