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

by D.J. Taylor

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Research, British Literature, Historical, World War I

384 pages, Hardcover

First published October 4, 2007

About the author

David John Taylor (born 1960) is a critic, novelist and biographer. After attending school in Norwich, he read Modern History at St John's College, Oxford, and has received the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award for his life of George Orwell.

He lives in Norwich and contributes to The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman and The Spectator among other publications.

He is married to the novelist Rachel Hore, and together they have three sons.

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

A good overview of the Worst Generation, aka the Bright Young People of the 20s and 30s. These were pretty much all absolutely awful posers and showoffs who needed a slap, but fortunately the author knows this. Highly readable with lots of useful refs for further reading and a specific chapter on homosexuality in the BYTs/20s.

[Nigeyb · Rating 4 out of 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".

4/5

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would never have thought that anyone could write a book about the Jazz Age that could be so sleep-inducing! The author constantly goes into tedious detail where it is not warranted. The core group of the Bright Young People of London in the 1920's were the first people, via modern media, to be famous for being famous. They had no special talent or skills so how much can you write about them? (There were some people on the edge of this group, such as Evelyn Waugh, who went on to greater accomplishments.)

In the case of Elizabeth Ponsonby, the author seems to have committed to paper everything he managed to find on her. However, Elizabeth's only claim to fame was that she was great fun at parties. And that's all: she had no special talent or skill and did nothing of social significance. (A Wikipedia article on her has been deleted on this basis.) She did sponge off her long-suffering parents until her premature death from drink in her late thirties, but she's not the first person in history to have done that. Yet the author gives much space to her story, quoting extensively from her father's diary where one or two quotations would have sufficed.

I'd give this 1.5 stars if I could. There is some interesting information here, but it is lost in a morass of insignificant detail.

[M. D. Hudson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had very little interest in reading this book, and it took me awhile to get hooked by it, but I do recommend it, flawed though it is. It seems every era of prosperity has its brat pack of flibbertigibbit young people with too much time on their hands, too much cleverness and not enough enduring talent. It’s called, I’m tempted to say, life. The Bright Young People (hereafter referred to as BYP) were a group of aristocratic and/or well-heeled young people (and their hangers on) who started doing outrageous things within the confines of a tightly-defined social milieu that pretty much characterizes England during just about any time in history after the Romans left c. 410 AD. Perhaps globalization has put the kibosh on such localized youth phenomenon – was the last outbreak in England was Carnaby Street in the Swingin’ Sixties? Or whatever street that was. I can never keep this straight. But in the 1920s, the BYP were echt-English (with the exception of a few of them who wound up becoming Nazis) and to some extent held the attention of the world, or at least the English tabloids.

Affluent young people doing silly stuff. Paris Hilton comes to mind -- as she should; she’d be good at being a BYP, and I mean this as a compliment – BYP status involved a great deal of hard work, shrewd friend-and-enemy-picking, and constant image burnishing. Still, who cares? Such gorgeous waifs add nothing to the culture, nothing to the economy except spending lots in the frou-frou market. Well, when it comes to the BYP of the 1920s, Evelyn Waugh is part of the pack, and Cyril Connolly and Anthony Powell, some attention should be paid. So I slogged on and found the book to have been well worth the effort. But it could have been a much better book…

***

First off, Taylor couldn’t make up his mind what kind of book he wanted this to be, and in the process missed an opportunity to write something that could’ve been great. Things start out with a pretty clinical sociological-cultural account of the era, with lots of snooty contemporary “Punch” cartoons. This is why it took my 4 months to read this thing, because I found this opening stuff competent but rather underwhelming (and again, my lack of interest in the subject contributed to my lack of enthusiasm). To be honest, except for Waugh and the other literary lights I had trouble keeping the names straight. But the true heart of the story came to my attention about halfway through when I noticed increasing references to elderly MP and diarist Arthur Ponsonby (and his wife Dorothea) and his alcoholic trainwreck BYP daughter Elizabeth and the man she was briefly married Denis Pelly. This story was the heart of the book, and gave it a heft that all those tabloid accounts of ridiculous theme parties couldn’t provide. Astonishingly, here is Taylor in the opening of his “Notes and Further Reading” section (found at the back of the book, after it was far too late to matter):

“The primary source for this book has been the mass of papers accumulated by the Ponsonby family. These include the extensive diaries kept by Arthur and Dorothea, letters sent to them by Elizabeth and the documents and other artifacts discovered in Elizabeth’s flat after her death…” (p. 329)

So if this stuff was the primary source, make the Ponsonby’s the heart of the story and let the other BYP’s enter the orbit! This Ponsonby material, from what I can tell, is significant. Arthur’s diary entries are heartbreaking – there is a talent (often unintentional) involved in writing a diary that anybody else would want to read, and Arthur has it, although so far as I can tell, he did not have an eye on literary posterity; he wrote in order to compose his thoughts and to better understand his life and family. The love for his hopeless, helpless, yet charming daughter Elizabeth is very, very moving. Her feckless husband (soon divorced) Denis Pelly is a case of a weak man trying hard to not be a wastrel (I am not exactly sure what happened to Denis – unless I missed it (and I tried the index to refresh my memory), Taylor’s failure to address his fate is unfortunate). And yet the reader will find that Taylor buries the Ponsonbys to the extent that they are just another casualty in BYP-era decade-long on-going catastrophe. There are clues that the Ponsonbys are special – one of the two photo sections has annoyingly truncated captions of the Ponsonby’s, referring to them only by their first names, that left me baffled (and annoyed). It was only halfway through the book before the Ponsonby’s emerged from the swirl of theme parties and car wrecks and hushed-up scandals. Only at the end of the book, when Arthur stops keeping his diary except for occasional anguished and soul-lacerating entries about his dead daughter, did the full extent of Taylor’s missed opportunity come clear.

So the Ponsonby heart of this book is (mostly) lost in a whirl of BYP shenanigans. Matters are not improved by Taylor’s intermittent mean streak and paparazzi mentality. For instance, one of my favorites of the BYP is Brian Howard, a failed writer and poet of substantial but squandered talent. Although Howard’s failures are detailed within the text, Taylor feels compelled to devote an entire, vicious chapter to him called “The Books Brian Never Wrote.” The heartlessness of this inculcated in me a real antipathy towards Taylor – so what’ve you done, Mr. Taylor? Indeed, almost all writers are failures in the big, enduring sense of the word. Howard’s sloth, pusillanimity, mama’s boy skirt-clinging and wishful thinking are easy to savage, but Howard also seemed to be a writer of some scruples and a decent amount of self-awareness. Taylor is far more impressed by forgettable but relentlessly productive hacks such as Robert Bryon. Making sure one establishes a career and stays comfy seems to be the benchmark of literary success for Taylor. Even outside literary matters, Taylor is a meanie. For instance, the pathetic (but rather dazzling, I must say, based on a photo published in the book) morphine addict Brenda Dean Paul comes in for some heavy-handed snarky Lindsay Lohan treatment. But Taylor’s breaking a butterfly on the wheel here, for Brenda Dean Paul’s life was nothing but sad and pitiful and hopeless.

The Bryan Guinness (a key BYP personality) that emerges from Taylor’s book is also blundered. Guinness, the brewery heir, fell in with the BYP’s and married, disastrously (always use the word “disastrously” when describing BTY marriages – it saves time) one of them, the beautiful and vacant Diana Mitford (vacant, but later all too filled up with intransigent Nazi ideology). From Taylor’s depiction, he seemed to be merely a particularly wan, colorless version of the typical BYP male. As it turns out, his wife and his wealth made him party central -- at the end of the book, we are told that Guinness was conservative and conscientious, wanting nothing more than to raise a family (and did so, having a bunch of kids by his second wife) and generally live a responsible life. That I still drink Guinness Stout is a testament to his business acumen. But this information came late, and as a surprise ending but it felt a little cheap – some hint of Guinness’s personality towards the beginning of the narrative would have provided this apparently normal, decent human being with at least some of the heft his character deserved.

And yet Taylor is capable of balance and compassionate good sense. What is strange is the fact he is best at the hard cases. For instance, some of the louche, desperate, and occasionally talented hangers-on orbiting the core of the BYP self-immolating super nova are rendered very deftly by Taylor. Celebrity photographer Cecil Beaton’s frantic social climbing is outlined by Taylor with shrewd good humor without descending into nastiness. Likewise, outsider Inez Holden is also nicely sketched. Furthermore, his take on the Mitford sisters, who I’ve always find loathsome, cloying, quasi-sinister, silly, and generally useless, struck me as very balanced. It would be easy to pile on Diana and Unity, who greatly admired and met and dined with and practically defected to Hitler. But History pretty much takes care of this kind of misguided foolishness and we don’t need somebody 70 years later going on and on about how benighted it all was. The 1930s were very confusing politically and yet it was almost mandatory that everybody be very, very, terribly sure of themselves. As Martin Amis notes, the fascists wind up being universally deplored while the Stalinists of the era are still given an astonishing amount of slack. Left or right, it was, as Auden famously said, a low, dishonest decade and the woozy, substanceless BYP’s did not come particularly well-equipped for the dangers and horrors of the 1930s. But then almost nobody did, except Winston Churchill. But I digress (and grossly over-simplify). Here’s something I didn’t know: when England declared war on Germany in 1939, “Unity (Mitford) walked to the middle of the English Garden in Munich and shot herself in the temple…” (p. 277 or so). But even a bullet to the brain couldn’t kill Unity, which is a testament to the incredible resilience of those awful Mitford girls. The Germans patched her up and shipped her back to England. Even Goebbels had no use for her.

A Mitford-Waugh aside: if you want something that will really make your gorge rise, read Waugh’s letters to Nancy Mitford. For decades he was her slave, for reasons having to do with the BYP era (he seems to have been dazzled by her beauty (and her sister Diana’s), mean girl cleverness, elevated social status, and wealth, basically). He just couldn’t shake her, and his catty, viciously gossipy letters to her, decade after decade show just how the 1920s stuck to the bottom of his shoe. The way he gently (oh so gently) tries to goad her into writing well (rather than slovenly) is sometimes funny, sometimes nauseating. In his defense, Nancy was the best of the lot…


***

A few miscellaneous complaints, etc.:

The only two BYP’s I’ve ever had an enduring interest in is Waugh and Cyril Connolly (I don’t include Powell because I know him only by reputation). Waugh is handled quite well by Taylor, who manages to get in both Waugh’s BYP biography and Waugh’s trenchant commentary on the BYP phenomenon in equal, well-balanced measures (although “Brideshead Revisited,” which is often concerned with the BYP 20-year-long hangover, is mostly absent). Waugh’s first disastrous (that word again!) marriage was to a woman also named Evelyn (He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn as they were known), and Taylor describes its disintegration with a commendable lack of malice. But Connolly is weirdly, inexcusably absent. In a way, he wrote the ultimate textbook on missed opportunities “Enemies of Promise” as well as perhaps the BYP’s most enduring literary work of all “The Unquiet Grave,” which is merely mentioned by Taylor as having been published in 1944.

The photos themselves are terrific in this book, but nonsensically arranged and cropped, and infuriatingly captioned half the time. The bulk of the Ponsonby photos are coyly identified by first name only (see above). This disjointed postmodern approach to printing photos in books seems to have become an editorial trend, one that needs to stop right now. Note to editors, or authors, or whoever the hell is responsible: knock it the hell off! Run the pictures big, clear, and clearly captioned on glossy paper. The virtual universe is already demolishing print, so don’t put books at even more of a disadvantage than they already are with clever collage-mongering and shoddy captioning.

Names: far too many BYP’s had surnames that function as given names or were otherwise confusing – Bryon, Brian and Howard, Brenda Dean Paul (a woman with one girl’s and two boy’s names), the two Evelyns, he and she. Taylor’s rather condescending tendency to refer to people by their given names added to the confusion and sent me to the index a lot to keep things straight.

[Alicia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I fell into this book sort of by accident. It started with reading a couple of the Patrick Leigh Fermor travel books which reminded me that I am fascinated by the period between 1890 and 1939, when we were wrenched (in my opinion) into the modern world -- and the period between WWI and WWII was the new world's childhood. I picked up Robert Graves' The Long Weekend, a social history of 1921-1939 which is a terrific, idiosyncratic read and then plunged into Bright Young People.

I am not a bit smarter for having read the book. This is the tale of the young, semi-monied 'smart set' whose parties were the stuff of society sections and scandal. They seem a perfect parallel for the Paris Hiltons and her tribe--not particularly useful, but taking up endless pages of copy. Taylor wrote the book recently (2004?)) and I have to wonder why. He tries hard to draw lessons from them without quite calling them dreadful examples, but the lessons are obvious and, in Taylor's hands, lead to no conclusions. Not counting the escapees like Evelyn Waugh and Cecil Beaton, they are the same lost, shallow or frittered lives that for some reason so enchant us in People Magazine or Star or Us --which I absolutely read every time I have my hair done. (Among my friends, it is legal to read them but illegal to buy them.) There is a better book in these stories--more bios would have made interesting reading. I think there may be a pungent, pertinent summation about our interest in the BYP--caught, embarrassed but fascinated by the excesses, sort of sorry we missed some of those type of parties and heartily hoping our kids missed them too.

I can't quite say I didn't like it, but it is now on the stack of books destined to be donated somewhere.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once I arrived at the second or third chapter I found this book difficult to put down for the night. The style of the writing keeps readers moving along at a fast pace, perhaps reminding us of the frenetic pace of the 1920s themselves. Each prominent "Bright Young Person"'s life and character is detailed, with portraits drawn clearly. After reading this book one almost feels as though one knows each member of the group personally. Among the members of the group upon whom focus is placed are Nancy Mitford and her sisters, Unity and Diana - the Fascists among the sisters, Alec and Evelyn Waugh, Cecil Beaton, Elizabeth Ponsonby, and Brenda Deen Paul. Other, less well-known members of the "Bright Young People" whom we get to know include Patrick Balfour, Brian Howard, Stephen Tennant, and others whose life achievements failed to keep them prominent in the public memory.

I'd recommend this book for readers interested in 20th century American culture, the 1920s in particular, and people who are curious about the small group of rich and boisterous youngsters who had so much influence during their time and yet now seem like falling stars - very bright for a moment and then gone.

[David Corvine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had previously read the biographies of Stephen Tennent and Brian Howard, also Paula Byrne's very interesting book Mad World, so I found little new in this work. The exception being the material regarding Elizabeth Ponsonby, the author had access to her family's archive, unfortunately there was little to justify the detail (to the point of tedium) with which Mr. Taylor treated this individual. She was one of the less significant members of the Bright Young People... really just an alcoholic who was famous for being famous and draining the funds of her long suffering parents.
More seriously than these faults I found a strong vein of homophobia throughout this work. The author makes several remarks about homosexuals being predators and is dismissive of the courage of those brave enough to live their lives openly despite facing prison and social disapproval.

[Elevate Difference · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has always described myself as an "old soul," I have a natural predisposition to understanding and appreciating the past. Though I recognize the implications and naiveté of such a wish, not a day goes by that I still don't pine, yearn, and frankly, tingle at the mere thought of being a young woman alive sometime during the first half of the twentieth century. In my opinion, those first fifty years garnered far more snazzier fashions, thought-provoking art, and interesting people than just about anything in the latter half.

In order to get my history fix, I often watch movies from the silent era and golden age of Hollywood (Bette Davis, Bette Davis, Bette Davis!), incorporate certain classic elements into my wardrobe and make-up choices (e.g., fishnet stockings, loose fitting tops with belts, wedged heels), and constantly read about the people, places, and things of the various decades. My latest conquest in the last department is a book called Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age, which is a thorough recreation and examination of the life and times of the budding British elite in the roaring '20s. The author, D.J. Taylor, not only provided my fix with his wonderful investigative work, but he also supplied me with the inspiration to find out even more about the people he traces, to read some of the books they wrote, and to finally get my hair waved.

The Bright Young People were a large group of London’s rich and famous young men and women. They’ve been immortalized in literature (Evelyn Waugh being the most prominent author of the period), in movies (Bright Young Things), and in various other types of art. In many ways, they’re immortal beings, which is odd considering they only existed for such a short time span in history. For ten or so years, they ruled the celebrity roost with their charming antics, extravagant parties, and bohemian sensibilities. Gin and tonic, bath and bottle parties, and lighthearted feelings were all the rage with this brood.

In the end, though, their hedonism and the prospect (and eventuality) of war in later years stopped their frolicking and merriment. A number of the Bright Young People failed to escape their hunger for extravagance and succumbed to the effects of alcohol and drugs. Others went to war and perished. Some retired their dancing slippers and hunkered down to a normal life. Many vanished into thin air.

Taylor artfully traces the origins of the Bright Young People with the same effervescent touch the people themselves possess. His language is sassy, sweet, and intelligent. Though he covers a lot of ground in the roughly twenty years, the text never feels heavy or meandering. Instead, it sucks you in like a great novel, or a great piece of gossip. Bright Young People will make you laugh while learning about a group of carefree individuals who, at one point or another, actually lived the life many of us dream of living.

Review by Sara Freeman

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book about the 1920s bright young things. Full of upper class aesthetes and their hangers on, it charts the parties, frivolities, attempts at doing a proper job, attempts at literature, hedonism, excess and general silliness of this group. You sense the lack of direction, too young for the war and therefore lacking a certain cachet. Some names stand out, as they went on to greater things; Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman, Cecil Beaton, Nancy Mitford to name a few. Others had less spectacular careers. Yet more were casualties, Elizabeth Ponsonby and Brenda Dean Paul.
The book doesn't always flow and tends to concentrate on a small number of the group. Brian Howard, Evelyn Waugh and Elizabeth Ponsonby are prominent. There are lives cut short by the next war and quite a few lives wasted. There is an intersting analysis of the direction taken politically in the 1930s. Some like Diana Guiness (nee Mitford and soon to be Mosley) became fascists others like Tom Driberg and Brian Howard moved to the left.
If, like me, you are fascinated by this period of history and the "Bright Young Things" then this book is a good starting point.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

With their older siblings and friends dead on the battlefields of France, Mayfair's jeunesse doree spent much of the 1920s acting out as outrageously as possible, the celebrity gossip columns in the hottest pursuit. This book picks over their, in many ways, tragic lives. Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, which sends up the same set, tells the story better.

[Annie Garvey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is probably a little too esoteric for me. I found the story of Elizabeth Ponsonby and her parents Arthur and Dorothea heartbreaking. "The Bright Young People" were the Paris Hiltons, Lindsay Lohans, and the reality stars of their day. It's sad that some bright young things never know when to leave the party.

[❀⊱RoryReads⊰❀ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a bit dry and reads like a thesis. It would have benefited greatly from tighter editing to cut repetition and correct a tendency to wander.
I recommend Serious Pleasures: the Life of Stephen Tennant by Philip Hoare if you're interested in the colorful people of this era.

[Elizabeth (Miss Eliza) · Rating 1 out of 5]

*Special Content only on my blog, Strange and Random Happenstance, during Jazzy July to celebrate the release of Lauren Willig's The Other Daughter, including introductions by Lauren! (July 2015)

The 1920s in England spawned a unique subculture. The Bright Young Things, people who partied every night, always had just the right bon mot, and never failed to make headlines in the newspapers, many written by their own set, swept through the country. While their parents might have thought of them as the scourge of the country with their depravity, the public couldn't get enough of reading about the antics of these young partygoers. But the artistic and bohemian lifestyle had a price, most of them wasted their talents and were burned out by their hedonistic lifestyle. Of all the Bright Young People, so few names remain memorable in the artistic community, such as Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford. What happened to the rest? They were the symbol of a decade but as that decade grew to a close the world was changing, war started to loom again on the horizon, and decadence wasn't looked on favourably during a time of retrenchment. Though looking back, it is fascinating to examine the beginning of what would become our celebrity obsessed society. It didn't start with Kim and Kanye, it started with Beverly Nichols and Elizabeth Ponsonby!

Biographies written by authors with an overinflated sense of self are hard to read. They don't let their subjects take center stage, being always more concerned with patting themselves on the back then doing justice to their subjects. D.J. Taylor is such a writer, more interested in using obscure words and overblown language to showcase his own "talent" then writing a solid book, whose subject matter I'm not even sure he liked all that much. There is a smugness in the way he assumes that everyone must know who and what he is talking about and that if you don't you are unworthy of this knowledge. This leaves the reader confused in a morass of names and events with only the loosest grasp of who any of the Bright Young People really are. Apparently a simple precise of the cast of characters would sully Taylor's writing and make the book too approachable by the uniformed masses. And the thing is, I'm not uniformed! I know many of the Bright Young People and still I felt like I was futilely trying to catch some meaning out of the fog Taylor creates with his impenetrable text. Bright Young People and authors like Taylor are the exact reason I have problems with biographies and why I so rarely read them. And if he referenced ONE MORE picture that wasn't included in the book I was ready to burn it, library fine or no.

When I read the biography on the Mitford sisters, I faced many of the same problems I faced here. The Sisters just rehashed commonly known facts and oft told stories I had heard in their own books while bringing nothing further to the table. Taylor does the same. He spends copious amounts of time dwelling on repeating plots from books or tales of parties that are better told elsewhere. Why would I be reading this book to read in detail the plot of Vile Bodies? If I wanted to know about Vile Bodies I would read Vile Bodies! Which I am actually planning on doing anyway. But the biggest problem I have with him summarizing these primary sources is he does it so badly. I know it's hard to condense a book's narrative down so that you engage your reader as well as give just enough detail without spoiling the book, heck I do it with every book review I write. So I think I'm a little qualified to pass judgment here. In the book's chapter entitled "Projections" which is near the end of the book, if you make it that far which I don't advise you to do, all Taylor does is badly summarize the literary efforts of the authors this generation spawned. Now I have read all the books Nancy Mitford has written, ALL THE BOOKS, and I could barely recognize Highland Fling from Taylor's description. The same can be said about Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie. Therefore I can only assume the books I haven't read were just as atrociously summarized. Plus, why do I want to read this when I could just pick up the original book? You would be better off reading all the primary sources then wading into this pompous and pretentious morass that theoretically attempts to unify the authors lives and works into one book.

What is fascinating about this grouping of authors, photographers, heiresses, and what have you is that they were a very egalitarian group, despite being very clannish. Many people site the first world war as the great equalizer. It was the last war where your status could get you a higher commission. The world started to shift from this Upstairs, Downstairs world to a world more founded on merit. Therefore why should it be any surprise that The Bright Young People were also a more democratic lot. Titled "Hons" rubbed shoulders with "laborers" in their midst. The two most recognizable of these lower orders rising up are Cecil Beaton and Evelyn Waugh. While Beaton was more overtly ambitious, these two men, who ironically hated each other, had humbler beginnings then many of their contemporaries among this glittering society. Waugh's father was an author and literary critic, while Beaton's was a timber merchant. While their beginnings weren't so humble as to be penurious, seeing as they went to the right schools and therefore worked their way into this new social circle, it is just fascinating that they had a-typical backgrounds. When you think of the writer to define this generation, this movement, while Nancy Mitford is a close second, Evelyn Waugh takes the top prize. He immortalized this period for future generations. Likewise if one was to think of a person who captured the images of the age, Cecil Beaton, hands down. Sure he went on to even greater acclaim and Academy Awards, but it is his portraiture of this age the captures it for time in memoriam.

One aspect that I found interesting enough to dwell a few minutes on was the idea of the Bright Young "Thing" versus the Bright Young "Person." Because it's an interesting theory I can unequivocally state that Taylor didn't think it up and it's been floating around for awhile, he just doesn't have it in him. While many people refer to the culture of the Bright Young Thing it would be more accurate to replace "Thing" with "Person" or "People" because this was a generation that, while they had an overall vibe, it was the personalities that made this movement important. Which is why little precises of all the movers and shakers would have been so helpful! If this is a movement about the people, it would be helpful to know who all these people are! Name drop all you want Taylor, if I don't know them just reading their names over and over again isn't going to magically enlighten me! This was really the epoch of what we now know as celebrity culture, of the "personality." Sure, there were famous personages prior to the twenties, but their every single detail down to who was at a bridge party at Nancy Mitford's house wasn't published in the press. This was when the exploits of so-called celebrities daily exploits were written up to be consumed by the masses who could barely comprehend living this party lifestyle. We still consume it at probably an even more rapid rate then they did back then. Turn on the television at any time of day and there are some pseudo-celebrities with cameras following them everywhere. And while it is funny to think about what a reality show with Elizabeth Ponsonby or Evelyn Waugh would have been like, in the end would the show be any more captivating then any current reality TV? Probably not. Just more people trying to stay in the spotlight with stunts and parties.

The biggest flaw though, in this overly flawed book, is that Taylor breaks basically the only rule for writing a work of non-fiction, and that is overreliance on one source. When you write non-fiction using only one person's diaries or journals it gives you a skewed view of what really happened. You are only getting one side of the story. You can't provide any kind of faithful narrative with only this one POV. Here the POV is almost strictly that of the Ponsonbys. Taylor must have been so flattered to be allowed unprecedented access to the Ponsonby family archive that it inflated his already inflated ego and turned this book more and more into a platform for the elder Ponsonbys to rail against their daughter, Elizabeth. Firstly, why didn't Taylor just write about them if they were so obviously his pet project, and secondly, the "generational struggle" that the diary entries are supposed to highlight as a typical reaction to children misbehaving don't work. At all. Instead, these diary entries focused on the behavior of their daughter make Elizabeth's parents seem unstable. They appear, quite dramatically, to be psychotically obsessed with their daughter's comings and goings, even onto the point of her sexual activity. If you think OCD helicopter parents are a new trend, I give you the Ponsonbys as proof against that. Seriously, they just give me the creeps. There's a book in their relationship with their daughter, it just shouldn't have been in any part of this one. Also, Norma Bates, you have been outdone, FYI.

The feeling this book leaves you with, beside rage at the author and a desire never to meet the Ponsonbys, is that of overwhelming sadness. The Bright Young People burned bright and fast, falling into ruin and disipation. The book couldn't be bothered with going into the whys and wherefores as to how this generation was formed, aside from quotes from far better authors of the time. But you still get that this generation was lost, not in the typical sense. They didn't disappear, they left their mark, but it was fleeting. They were lost in the wilderness and didn't know how to make a life of parties and treasure hunts and dressing up transition into a real life, with productive work and a future. Of all the personalities profiled, Elizabeth Ponsonby, Evelyn Waugh, Cecil Beaton, Anthony Powell, Harold Acton, John Betjeman, Edward Burra, Edward Gathorne-Hardy, Babe Plunket-Greene, Brian Howard, Beverly Nichols, Brenda Dean Paul, Bryan Guinness, Henry Green, the Sitwells, and the Mitfords, and many more, the average person would probably only know Evelyn Waugh. If they are more of a reader, perhaps Waugh, Nancy Mitford, and Anthony Powell. Of the coeterie of personalities, only a small handful are still known. Only these few had any lasting power. Yet all these people wrote or act or were creative and yet there is nothing to remember them by. So maybe they are lost in every since of the word. It's too too sad making.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's impressive, how the author managed to take such an inherently exciting topic and make it dull as dishwater. It's the Jazz Age. Hot new music! Short skirts! Fast cars! Nightclubs! The Charleston! Cocktails! Drugs! Premarital Sex! Youngsters goin' wild!

I thought this book would give me more details about London's media darlings, the cafe society known as the Bright Young People. Instead, Taylor gives short & vague summaries of the famous parties of the era. He hardly mentions the scavenger hunts. Drug use is downplayed dramatically. So are sexual relationships. Even the catty humor of many of the main figures is hardly discussed.

So what does he spend 350 pages talking about? There are a lot - a lot - of detailed summaries of novels. (Have I suddenly fallen into a vat of Spark Notes?) He writes about politics and political campaigns. He gives a huge amount of space in the book to Elizabeth Ponsonby and her relationship with her parents.

Taylor could have easily given the reader footnotes each time a main figure was introduced. Instead, I was constantly putting down the book so I could google a list of names. Why am I doing all the work? How hard would it have been to add at the bottom of the page a line or two about each person? "Son of Lord So & So, Oxford graduate, painter, died of a drug overdose etc"

Even though the initial group were all close friends, I got very little sense of any of the friendships involved. I'm not even sure who slept with whom. The era is just as vague and muddled for me now, as it was before I even read the book. I gave it 2 stars mainly for the few funny bon mots Taylor included and for the photos.

* When someone is spraying too much perfume - "My dear, you're not putting out a fire"

* Mr Byron has designed an original present....it is a book plate and bears the legend 'Stolen from Bryan and Diana Guinness'

* When some local rural toughs start shouting "sissy" at Eddie Gathorne-Hardy he quickly retorts "That's Lady Sissy to you!"

*When Stephen Tennant's father asked him what he wanted to be in life, Stephen responded "A great beauty, sir."

* Elizabeth Ponsonby's father talking about her - Her preference for disreputable people is, I'm afraid, quite incorrigible."

Man, what a waste of a subject matter!

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bright Young People is an enthusiastic romp through the history of the most fascinating celebrity youth movements of the early British twentieth century.

Drawing on access to a number of personal diaries, this expose on the lives of such celebrities as Elizabeth Ponsonby, Evelyn Waugh and Cecil Beaton demonstrates clearly that the celebrity culture of today is not new in any way. The drug-fuelled traumatic lifestyle of Brenda Dean Paul, pursued on a daily basis by the London newspapers across UK and mainland Europe, show us that today's popstars and other celebrities are little different from the previous products of many years experience by the London-based media factory. Indeed, the current media attention gained by Amy Winehouse is reminiscent of the way in which Brenda Dean Paul was treated; on the one hand trying to deal with her addiction(s) and weight loss in private, under the intrusive eye of the camera lens; and on the other hand, perfectly capable of promoting herself in the media for monetary gain when it suited.

DJ Taylor writes in a methodical and structured manner, utilising the resources of memoirs and diaries from the central BYP characters, and also from their parents and other relatives, to give an immediacy to the critical commentary on this turbulent social period.

He examines the association of the BYPs, in particular the Mitford sisters, with the UK fascist movements of Mosley and others, suggesting that "Mosley's message must have at least some spiritual connection with the world of upper-class dissipation and subsidised high living............. The psychological connection between the Blackshirts and the idle young rich hangs over many a novel of the period."

I looked to this social history book with an inquisitive eye for the background behind Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies. I was satisfied to discover that Taylor's work includes Waugh's personal involvement in the BYP movement, but there is much more than this, from the impulsive early days of Oxford treasure hunts and London decadence, through to the London events staged (exclusively, perhaps) for the media, giving hints along the way to their future self-destruction.

Taylor finishes with the death throes of the BYP culture in the advent of World War Two, and completes the book with a rather hasty round-up of the final years of his central characters.... the last paragraphs detail a father's touchingly fond memories of a daughter following the untimely and premature death of one of the brightest of the Bright Young Things.

If nothing else, read this book for the party ideas and the names: Tallulah Bankhead, Lytton Strachey, Edward Gathorne-Hardy, Zita Jungman, to name but a few.

Fabulous, darlings, fabulous!

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is somewhere between a group biography and a social history, and I think that lack of distinction is why I didn't like it more. A great deal of it is devoted to the life of Elizabeth Ponsonby, whom Taylor puts forth as a typical "Bright Young Person", but there isn't quite enough of her life for me to really feel that it was a well-rounded account of it. Simultaneously, there's enough of it that not enough time is devoted to other Bright Young People, and the whole book feels rather shallow as a result. It's entertaining, don't get me wrong, and I'll probably keep it as a general reference and jumping-off point for further reading, but it wasn't what I'd hoped it would be.

(Also, I don't think Taylor gets Nancy Mitford terribly well, and I object to his referring to her as "Nancy", when he refers to male writers like Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell by their surnames. And someone should have gone through the book and deleted every use of the word "alternatively", a verbal tic which irritated me enormously by the end.)

[Erica Chambers · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not totally sure why D.J Taylor wrote this book. He looks down on the phenomenon of the BYP's and thus spends very little time concentrating on the rise of the BYP - but relishes the fall. The parties and Treasure Hunts of the 1920's aren't covered any depth of detail. The book sets up the subject; introduces the characters and then jumps straight to the early 1930's - when everything was starting to wind down.
He dismisses the majority of the main characters as silly, empty headed and affected. I don't really know much more about the BYP than I did when I started - but I do know that D.J Taylor disapproved of them.

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Father: "I should have thought that a nightclub was the very last place a daughter of mine would go to ..."
Daughter: "It usually is, darling."

Not the first generational subset to dedicate themselves so wholeheartedly to hedonism, but perhaps the first ones to do it with such reckless, absurdist abandon.

The circumstances of an Empire's spectacular affluence falling to a generation half in shock from the carnage and yes, absurdism of the Great War--- added up to a unique position for the well-off children of the Edwardian age. Eton & Oxbridged until they were good for little beyond an intense social calendar, the Bright Young Things looked toward rebelling in ways self-destructive of the prevailing order of the era.

Fairly well designed to skewer some sacred cow of the day, whether political, sexual, class-system or otherwise, the Party was the weapon of mass destruction for the generation that knew Polite Society had been truly extincted in the War. Parties where a Duchess and an avant-garde painter might meet on equal terms. Parties inhabited by the ghosts (in costume of course) of Buckingham Palace Guards, Lords & Ladies of antiquity, Crowned Heads Of Europe (usually cross-dressed for this one), odalisques, gargoyles, hobos, and fops galore. Author Taylor points out that the core symbols of the Bright Young were a mix of the banal and the mythical : harlequins, pierrots, sailors, satyrs, acrobats, figures from the commedia-del-arte.

One gets the idea that you could glace around the room at a BYP party and feel that all iterations of human folly were present, ornately coiffed, solidly squiffed and about to be pushed into the ornamental pool. Alongside the insistent rhthym of the too-too-trendy Negro Jazz Band, the uppermost item on any proper party-needs list.

The stunts and outrages of the Bright Young set are varied and entertaining; Taylor does a reasonable job of getting them all in some kind of order. There are many the theme-party, pool-party, garden-party, suprise-party and each requires some introduction. Where this book goes off the tracks is in that awkward World-War / Decadence axis, the undertow of self-loathing & generational angst that was tearing England apart in the twenties (and Europe, it might be said). The fact that much of the drive toward manic debauchery was in horrified denial of the nightmare of Flanders and the Somme-- is noted, but in passing rather than as a central pillar of the book. A minor note is that cultural angst (dada, expressionism and surrealism were emerging in reaction to the war) is pretty well glossed-over, as well. This is a book about Parties, not the broader gestalt of the era.

To give Taylor credit, he does see the broader picture : "By the time of the Bath And Bottle party of 1928, it is fair to say, the Bright Young Person with his or her tatterdemailion getup, stylized speech and chronic affectations would have been as instantly recongnizable an archetype to the average newspaper reader as the suffragette of twenty years before...." but :

Beneath it though, lies something more disquieting. Unsurprisingly, the fundamental concerns of Bright Young People novels turn out to be those of the Bright Young People themselves: generational conflict, doubts about the value of human relationships, the resigned expectation of unpleasant things to come. The future, as conceived by a Powell, Mitford or a Waugh, is never a rosy blur but something hard, sharp, and ominous. "Do you think one of these days everything will come right?" Harriet demands of Atwater, in Afternoon Men. "No," he assures her ...

A quibble is that the chapters on both Brian Howard and Brenda Dean Paul are really unnecessarily vicious; this is a book about callow youth and the excesses of an Age Of Excess-- of which, these both were decidedly emblematic. Hard to settle the acidic tone relating to these two whilst all the sympathy possible is brought to bear on the more attractive Elizabeth Ponsonby. I don't think it's in the historian's purview to decide that, amongst the monstrously self-centered, some characters are loathsome but necessary and others are equivalently dubious, but, well, so very attractively so.

A footnote to the BYP extravaganza is that Hollywood took to the idea like a fish to water and before long the outlandish endurance-partying and staged stunts of the idle rich became a regular theme. The absurdist playboy and his dangerously reckless moll, perhaps on a drunken scavenger hunt--- were to revisit the celluloid medium for decades to come.

Of the many anecdotes that ping of Hollywooden moments, it is easy to see Brenda Dean Paul on the silverscreen of the newly-austere Thirties, acting with the blissed-out aplomb of her partygirl persona of the Twenties: Avenging herself on "a hostess who had been slandering her, by rubbing a lobster mayonnaise into her hair, as she lay comatose on a divan ..."

That's lobster mayonnaise-- a Bright Young Thing would never be so déclassé as to use an everyday mayonnaise blanche on a Society Hostess.
It just woudn't do.

[Maryann MJS1228 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of a group of privileged young people who captivate London press with their antics (read: bad behavior and total willingness to behave like idiots in public) and occasional brushes with the law. No, it's not the story of Lauren and Heidi or Paris and Lindsey. The subjects are upper class twenty-somethings in the 1920s London.

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. Evelyn Waugh (a major chronicler of this ilk), Cyril Connolly, and Cecil Beaton key players but the bulk of the story revolves around once revered but now forgotten bubble-heads like Elizabeth Ponsonby, Brian Howard, Brenda Dean Paul and Steven Tennent. Yes, they may not have been complete idiots but who really wants to defend the intellects of people whose major consuming interests were: parties, stunt parties, drinking, treasure hunts, costume parties, and more drinking.

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 literary 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.

There's plenty of metaphorical and literal car crashes on display from Brenda Dean Paul's pioneering turn as a starlet drug addict, Elizabeth Ponsonby - generally and, best of all, the story of Gavin Henderson's wedding to a nice girl mummy approved of and the wedding night that the bride spent alone and he spent with a sailor he picked up. Somehow the marriage doesn't take. They natter on about becoming actresses, writing books or plays, painting pictures, but few of them ever actually create anything more permanent than a particularly inspired party invitation. It's easy to read these stories and snicker at the disproportion between the BYP's pretensions and their accomplishments. The sadder point that Taylor makes is that this really was the very best life they could imagine.

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 Connolly in "Where Engels Fears to Tread", a satire about a BYP who embraces communism and exhorts his fellow BYPs to join him with the words "Morning's at seven, and you've got a new matron."

Back to Heidi and Lauren etc., you could easily substitute their names (or any tabloid darlings de jour) for several characters here, switch "plays" for movies and "singer" for "writer" and you wouldn't notice the difference for several pages. Seeing how far back our fascination with pointless celebrity extends is interesting and thankfully this story is in the hands of writer who is sympathetic but not indulgent.

This is an enjoyable read for any fan of biography or early 20th century European history, and any student of celebrity.

[Val · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was much more interesting than I thought it would be, because the author puts the antics of the group into context, socially and politically. There was still a lot of detail about parties and places to be seen, but it was not simply an extended gossip column.
As an aside: Did anyone actually like Cecil Beaton, or was he merely tolerated because he could set up a pretty photograph?

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the cover as soon as I saw it in a bookshop, so I requested it from the library to see if it was good enough to buy. A scathing remark from a character in Bury Her Deep that he was not a bright young person reminded me that I had this waiting to be read, so I cracked it open.

Either this book left out heaps of context, or the audience was people who are expected to know more about the significance of these people ... but I thought the book was supposed to be about that? (In retrospect I think the problem was that I have read plenty of historicals from this era, but not much of its contemporary fiction.) Evelyn Waugh, sure. Harold Nicolson, certainly, though he was more a fringe figure in this book. Diana Mosley before she was Diana Mosley, sure, and Nancy Mitford, of course. But Brenda Dean Paul seems to have been the Lindsey Lohan of her time. Imagine reading a book that collected the expanded stories behind Texts From Last Night. Trust me, it's not as fun as it sounds.

Summary: these people partied a lot. Many of them (especially the men) had posh public school educations and then were up at Oxford. (For my fellow USAmericans who are not Anglophiles, that might be translated as "They went to snooty boarding schools and then to the UK equivalent of Harvard.") But many of them didn't accomplish very much. (Though there were exceptions, like Mitford and Waugh.) What the author said of Eddie Gathorne-Hardy (see this page) seemed to apply to most of them: "And yet the erudition, the generosity and the loyalty combined only to produce a desert of nonachievement, a fatal disinclination to engage with the wider environment at any serious level."

For the most part, that was these guys. And after a while, it was terrible to read. In addition, the sourcing is not what I would call sufficient. Quotations are sourced, but not every piece of information.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 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.

[Ari · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure how I came across this book but the name sounded cool, 'Bright Young People'. Of course after I read the description it became clear that the author was not necessarily referring to their brains when he said 'bright'. But it's definitely a term that I can see making a resurgence. Hell I'd like to be a part of a group known as the Bright Young People, fun but also smart. The group in the 1920s that he profiles is mostly fun. They have brains but they focus more on throwing outrageous parties. Parties that reminded me of sorority and fraternity parties in college life today since they have lots of alcohol and crazy themes.

Someone else who reviewed this book mentioned their frustration with the photos in this book and I concur. The captions were vague and I hated that several characters were mentioned with no photos. Maybe if you're British you're already pretty familiar with the cast of characters but I'd never heard of any of them and I like to visualize. The Ponsonbys were interesting as were the Mitfords and I wish more time had been spent on them. But I really liked the contrasts the author drew between the BYP in the 1920s and the rude awakening they had with the rise of Hitler, it was nice to see that they didn't stay apathetic (although some of them veered towards Fascism so I do wish they had just stayed out of it) and began to grow up and form real opinions. There was no name for the BYPs in America but they were a part of the 'Lost Generation' and resemble most characters in Fitzgerald's novels so I'm glad Taylor shone a new light on a group of people who had been forgotten, even if they didn't make significant historical contributions, they ushered in the beginnings of paparazzi culture and a few did make good (Evelyn Waugh for example).

[Denis · Rating 4 out of 5]

With deep insight, understanding, and compassion, D.J.Taylor takes us on a fascinating journey through time, as he revisits the world of the eccentric, young party people who made up the so-called "Bright Young People" crowd. The portrait of this lost generation is at the same time exciting, hilarious, sad - and sobering in more ways than one, considering how it all ended. This is a deeply satisfying book, that manages to recreate the magic of the jazz age without falling into the trap of nostalgia: Taylor's account is actually more tragic than one could expect, and what remains in our mind, more than the delirious and constant parties that have become legendary, is the vulnerability of the generation he writes about. The young people at the core of this true story are, indeed, truly lost, in the most disturbing sense of the word, and their talent for fun is coupled with their talent for self-destruction. Taylor understands that, and writes about it without sentimentality, but with heart and emotion. His book is filled with personalities (some still remembered, some completely forgotten) whose flaws are often very touching (and infuriating!), and all the anecdotes and details bring vividly back to life a bygone era. Taylor has opened a window on a time that makes us dream, but whose reality was not as beautiful as we like to imagine it. A pervasive despair oozes from these pages. And it's uncanny how the way young people have enjoyed themselves decades later remains incredibly similar to what a few madcap heiresses and artists were doing in the aftermath of World War I.

[M- S__ · Rating 3 out of 5]

After watching the 2013 documentary Teenage , I found myself revisiting this image of maybe 8 young people dressed as babies, sitting in strollers with a narration about the "Freak Parties" the Bright Young People were throwing. I thought to myself, this is it. This is the party I want to be at. The whole scene had me entranced. It was the sort of eccentric androgynous 80s coke binge thing I had never really seen associated with the 20s youth culture, and it was a thing I desperately wanted to read more about. This is not that book. This book is more focused on the history, on the opinions of the adult culture, on the family connections, and inevitably on how these young people came to become contemplative boring adults. There's a pretty tame but interesting chapter titled "Gay Young People." There is excitingly a lot of material from journals and diaries. And maybe I wanted to make this history something it wasn't. Maybe I should've known that since even in this hyper speed celebrity stalking culture we never really know what's going on, it was unreasonable to want to get in the pants of people a hundred years ago. Maybe this book is the most authoritative thing we've got. But damn it I was let down by this book, and I had to vent.

[Rob Atkinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well written and thorough account of London's "Bright Young People", the party set that scandalized Britain in the 1920's. This is framed as a serious social history, and those expecting a frothy series of anecdotes and delicious bon mots may be disappointed as I was. Other than marginal figures in the scene such as Beaton and Waugh, the principal figures in the scene are largely unsympathetic in their frivolousness and lack of any meaningful accomplishment; they come across as rich spoiled brats, desperate to keep the never-ending party interesting through increasingly strained conceits. Yes, the war left its scars on the next generation's collective psyche, but instead of the efflorescence of art and literature found in contemporary Paris, New York, and Berlin, the London scene seemed to revolve solely around excessive drinking and willful silliness -- costume parties, baby talk, and forced novelty. Sustaining interest in their antics proved difficult for this reader. If anything, the "Bright Young People" are notable for pioneering the 'celebutante' phenomenon, of being famous simply for being famous, that shallow celebrity based on party photos and gossipy press clippings so familiar to us today.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth Ponsonby, Tom Driberg, Anthony Powell, the Mitford sisters, Evelyn Waugh, and Cecil Beaton are just a few of the Bright Young People in Taylor’s history of this group of party goers in post WWI England. Some were destined for success, some for a life of mediocrity or failure, but all were part of a brilliant media circus. Waugh, Beaton, and Powell , in particular, used the social scene as a launching pad for their careers. Taylor uses diaries and media accounts as well as fictional portrayals by Waugh, et al to give us a snapshot of this world of gossip and excess. The bad economy of the ‘30’s along with the rise of fascism brought an end to the gaiety but it luster had already begun to wear off. The book also serves as a reminder that this type of pleasure-seeking is endemic to youth. Too often we look at we look at contemporary youth with a sanctimonious air of “Today’s youth are out of control. We were never like that” when, in fact, we may have been worse. Personally, I found myself wanting to don a costume and join the party.

Note: The edition of the book that I read has a slightly different title: "Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of the Jazz Age."

[Jenn Estepp · Rating 2 out of 5]

Given the subject matter, it would be difficult not to write a readable, interesting book, no? But, if you aren't already an aficionado of the Bright Young Things, I don't think this would be a good introduction. You're better off reading Waugh or Mitford or Powell. The luxury of fiction is that one can cut out the boring bits ... This is not fiction and as a scholarly text, it can be a bit dry and snooze-inducing after a while. Also, the organization seemed somewhat disjointed - lots of jumping around - and too much reliance on certain figures - I assume because Taylor had cooperation from their families. I also wish the American version had the original cover (which is much better) and more pictures.
That being said, if you are a fan of the Bright Young Things/20s Brit lit already, it's great to learn about the real-life people behind the characters and even about specific events that gave inspiration to literature.

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very well-written, well-organized, enjoyable and subtle history of a select set of wealthy and elite (and would-be wealthy and elite) English youth in the 1920s. Taylor both recuperates the value and interest of their exploits and acknowledges the sad and wasteful dimensions of their devil-may-care approach to life and expenditures of both energy and money. The book gets a little bit repetitive because the costume parties, slangy quips, and rebellion against parents were a bit repetitive. The most interesting parts are the character sketches of the individual participants in this media phenomenon of the Bright Young People (celebrity heirs and partiers, starting the tradition that would give us Paris Hilton...lucky us), and the least interesting bits present summaries of their literary output, all of which (except for Waugh's Vile Bodies) sounds exactly the same -- vaguely satirical and thin.

[Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about two groups of people, successes and victims. The first group consisted of Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Nancy Mitford, and Cecil Beaton, all if whom, with the exception of Mitford, started out with conventional middle class upbringings. Harold Acton eventually emerged as a chronicler of debauched Italian nobility. The victims were an odd assortment of nobility and the well connected and for them the post World War I years were marked by party going and a failure to live up to potential, Stephen Tennant, Brian Howard and Elizabeth Ponsonby, among others delighted the newspapers of the day with their antics, before slipping into obscurity as tastes changed in the thirties. I am not sure that the squalor of their lives warrants their prominence in this book. D,J. Taylor shows how Waugh, Powell, Mitford, Beaton and others made use of the era and its victims to create some of the greatest works of art in the 20th century