The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age

by Juliet Nicolson

Armistice Day 1918 dawns with great joy for victorious Britain, but the nation must confront the carnage war has left in its wake. In The Great Silence, Juliet Nicolson looks through the prism of daily life to narrate the rich but unknown history of the slow healing Britain undergoes in the two years following that day.

The two-year anniversary of the Armistice brings some closure at last: the remains of a nameless soldier, dug up from a French battlefield and escorted to London in a homecoming befitting a king, are laid to rest in glory in the Tomb of the Unknown at Westminster Abbey. “The Great Silence,” the two minutes observed in memory of those lost, halts an entire nation in silent reverence as Big Ben strikes eleven.

The Great Silence paints a vivid picture of a nation fighting the forces that threaten to tear it apart—and discovering the common bonds that, as it moves into a new era, hold it together.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War I, British Literature, War, Biography, European History

302 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

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

[Jill H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This moving look at the two years immediately following the Great War truly affected me in its poignancy. The author, who has impeccable literary and political credentials, has done a magnificent job in presenting the unimaginable grief and struggle for understanding that gripped Britain as an entire generation was wiped out in the muddy trenches.

She examines the sorrow of all classes of the population, from the aristocracy to the shop keeper, as they individually and collectively attempted to recover from the horror of their losses. Her description of the return of the Unknown Soldier from the fields of France to the burial in Westminster Abbey will move the reader to tears (or at least this reader).

This is a beautiful book and the frontispiece of the famous painting "Grief" by Hugh Cecil puts it all in perspective. Highly recommended.

[Jill H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This moving look at the two years immediately following the Great War truly affected me in its poignancy. The author, who has impeccable literary and political credentials, has done a magnificent job in presenting the unimaginable grief and struggle for understanding that gripped Britain as an entire generation was wiped out in the muddy trenches.

She examines the sorrow of all classes of the population, from the aristocracy to the shop keeper, as they individually and collectively attempted to recover from the horror of their losses. Her description of the return of the Unknown Soldier from the fields of France to the burial in Westminster Abbey will move the reader to tears (or at least this reader).

This is a beautiful book and the frontispiece of the famous painting "Grief" by Hugh Cecil puts it all in perspective. Highly recommended.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book about the Great War and its aftermath in England. Really enjoyed the author's writing style.

[Nigeyb · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book, and was looking forward to finding out more about the two years immediately after the end of World War 1 which presaged a period of enormous social change. The book takes a chronological approach, and gives almost every chapter a one word title (e.g. Wound, Hopelessness, Yearning, Resignation etc.).

For every interesting piece of information (e.g. the tragedy of the Scottish soldiers returning to the Isle of Lewis, the Spanish flu epidemic, or the development of reconstructive surgery), there seemed to be coverage of less relevant issues (Lady Diana Cooper's addiction to cocaine and morphine, Lady Ottoline Morrell having an affair with a younger stonemason, Tom Mitford's dietary choices, or the King's uncertainty about a two minute silence).

I wonder if the immediate two year period following the war was an insufficient timeframe to understand the social impact of WW1. Certainly I found The Long Week-end: A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-39 by Robert Graves, and The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties, 1919-1940 by Ronald Blythe, which cover the longer period between World War One and World War Two, to be far more interesting and satisfying to read.

Overall I thought there was far too much emphasis on the aristocracy and, whilst a quick and easy read, ultimately it felt superficial, incoherent and a missed opportunity. It frequently read more like an upper class gossip column than a serious social history. Very disappointing.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent social history of a snapshot in England's past, right after the First World War, after the death and destruction, and shows the journey as a nation attempted to come to terms with what had happened and the emptiness left behind by the loss of so many men.

I loved , so this book was an auto-buy for me as soon as I spotted it in kindle version. The writing style is very similar - the author effortlessly weaves her glimpse at a snapshot of time into themes, using the quotes and experiences of a wide variety of people who lived through it, as a backdrop to the history of the time. It made it real, intimate and incredibly easy to read, never dry or boring.

The author does not try to disguise or gloss over the horror of WW1, but she doesn't dwell on it either. She treats it with respect, enough to frame the lives of those left behind and the chasm which could never be filled, even though she shows how some sort of life did go on after a war which wiped out 30% of men who were aged between 20 and 24 in 1911.

Yes, it is hard to read in places. I'm pretty easily disturbed by the whole concept of such destruction of life, and made the mistake of reading the last chapter on the train to the office. It is incredibly moving, upsetting and yet gives a very personal understanding of the need for some sort of demonstration of closure, with the burial of the Unknown Soldier, and what this actually meant for so many people at the time. I nearly cried all the way to work I was so affected, but at last I understand what that marble slab I've paused at in Westminster Cathedral actually means.

I can't recommend this book enough if you want to appreciate what was left behind after WW1. The wide range of interesting facts and anecdotes the author has managed to assemble, gave amazing texture to my understanding of what it was like to be there, as well as improving my knowledge of a few individuals whose names I have heard before.

Expect to see a mass of new books on my TBR pile - the sources and references are fabulous too.

5 stars. All-time-favorites list.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A social history of England during the years immediately following the First World War. Lots of names and well known personalities get a mention, as does the first time a minutes silence happened on Remembrance Day 1919 and the burial of the unknown soldier in the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at Westminster Abbey on 11 November 1920. An interesting read.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicolson, the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and the diplomat Harold Nicolson, has written a moderately interesting social history of Britain in the first few years after World War I, when people were numb with grief but most tried to keep a stiff upper lip. Her writing method is to pile anecdotes on top of each other; the effect can be somewhat disjointed and amateurish, as if you're reading her notes directly off the index cards.

I did learn something new, but it had nothing to do with Britain after the war: In January 1919, a molasses storage tank on the Boston waterfront burst, spilling two million gallons into the streets, killing 21 and injuring 150, destroying buildings and warping elevated train lines. How had I never heard of this?

[Marguerite Kaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am fascinated by the Great War and the social upheaval which followed. I've written several stories about it and read tons more, and yet reading this book, I feel I haven't even come close to understanding the sheer devastation which those four years caused.

It is not only the scale of the loss of life -which is almost unimaginable. It is the gaps left in so many lives by loss, gaps which proved impossible for some to be filled. Many young women never married. Many people spent the rest of their lives grieving, or having nightmares, or hiding away. No matter how hard people tried, or the government and Establishment urged, there could be no return to normal. Women could not be forced back into the home. Servants could not be found. Marriages were broken beyond recovery. Those whose consciences or physical state meant they did not take part were ostracised. Politics became radicalised as the 'rewards' for fighting failed to materialise. Respect and deference became the values of the past. Addiction, and the horrendous injuries (physical and mental) of the returning heroes made it impossible for them to be assimilated back into their 'old' lives.

This is a beautifully written, evocative and emotional book. It tells a tale of a society struggling to come to terms with something that couldn't be understood. A society which at first eschewed the healing powers of mourning in its efforts to roll its sleeves up and get on, and which turned itself inside out in its attempts to adjust. If there had been positive consequences of the war, the impact would have been easier to deal with. But there were few positive consequences.

This is not a dull, dry tome of history. Very far from it. It's a story, a drama, an emotional journey of a book. I felt wrung out at the end of it, and tinged with the optimism of the people on the second anniversary of the armistice. Despite knowing that twenty years later there was worse to come. That's how good a book this was. Highly recommended.

[Jill Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Great Silence" is Juliet Nicholson's second book, after publishing "The Perfect Summer" in 2007. The first book was a social history of that glorious summer of 1911, the first summer after the ending of the Victorian and Edwardian ages.

With "Silence", Nicholson has returned with a meticulously written view of the two years in England after the end of "The Great War" in 1918. British soldiers returned after demob to their homes but in many cases, their lives would never be the same after four years in the trenches in France. So many men - who had marched gaily off to war in 1914 - had been killed or badly wounded, both in body and in spirit. So many women lost their sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers. An entire generation of young men were decimated in the four years of war.

Nicholson writes about all strata of British society, both "above" stairs and "below" stairs. Some of the people she interviewed were children in 1919 and are alive today. She also relied on written histories, both personal and academic. All together, Nicholson takes the reader back to that two year post-war period that saw the beginnings of the "Roaring '20's" with a national obsession for dancing and drinking by all levels of society. She also writes about the toll the "Spanish Flu" had on those at home who caught it from returning soldiers.

Nicholson is a very good and controlled writer. This book was not available in the States and I had to order it from Amazon/UK when it was issued there last year. Nicholson's first book was such a good read, I had to have her sequel. It is a wonderful look at a very interesting time in British society.

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

The silence that followed 'the incessant thunder' of WW I

Juliet Nicholson has that rare ability to recreate an historic period, making it so real that we feel as though we are living it. The theme of this perfectly written book is the effect that World War I had on England, more specifically the silence that fell over this island nation after the destruction of a huge majority of the men of England. But it is far more than the agony of dealing with the deaths of almost a million young men and older soldiers. This is a book about survival and how England coped with attempting to find a plane of recovery. Nicholson's writing is filled with references to speeches and poems and writings that dealt with the sorrow: 'This book aims to discover what happened to that peaceful pre-war society after the intervening gash of war years and the death or injury of more than two and a half million men. How had society changed and how were people adapting or failing to adapt to that change. In 1920 the journalist Philip Gibbs wrote of "fits of profound depression alternating with a restless desire for pleasure" I want to know what kind of sound was made by the hinge that linked those two sensibilities.'

What follows is a careful examination of people's responses to the devastation economically, physically, psychologically, and spiritually to that time, a time not unlike a post-apocalyptic period when death had become so common a concept that many of the populace embraced the wildness of the Roaring 20s that stepped across the Atlantic from the United States to escape its dominion. How does a country bereft of men find the continuation of family and reproduction of children? The Suffragettes moved into power in all forms of the country's business because of the need to fill the gaping holes left from the loss of manpower. Nicholson documents specific items and periods and movements that resulted from the aftermath of the Great War and even provides photographs of the ruins that stained the lives of all the inhabitants of England. 'Fighting and death had only been a part of it. The delayed response to sights and sounds, the mutilation, the hammering of guns experienced by those returning was just beginning. Would any of them recover? Would any of them find a lasting peace? Would a healing silence ever come to them, as they lay awake at night, trying to forget? This is a book about the pause that followed the cataclysm; the interval between the falling silent of the guns and the roaring of the 1920s.'

Nicholson has the gift to make reportage into a novel. Her chapters are name Shock, Denial, Hopelessness, Dreaming, Surviving, Hope, Acceptance: 11 November 1920 etc - and in separating the various realms of response of the nation she offers us individual reports as well as surveys of groups of people and classes and how England was forever changed. It is a beautifully written document, one that carries far more power than most books about that period, and one that is especially potent at this time when we are all so surrounded by wars around the globe. A powerful and informative book.

Grady Harp

[Bruce Katz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A powerful if uneven look at the aftermath of WWI at home in England. It was the "Great War" in their minds. H.G. Wells called it "The war that will end war." Except that it was neither: barely two decades later the savagery would be magnified and events reshaped it as "World War 1."

The phrase Great Silence refers most prominently to the British government's effort to find a way to honor the war dead with two minutes of silence on a day that would thereafter be known as Armistice Day. Until that name changed too. Nicolson is very good at demonstrating how much the war upended the norms, standards, and ethos of the country. Looking back from the distance of more than a century (!) and with the experience of a second world war our perspectives and expectations are entirely different: we know, if only indirectly, how destructive war is, how vast and corrosive. To the British people of that time, however, the period from 1914 to (say) 1922 were nothing less than an earthquake. They went to war with the expectation that the war would not last very long, that war was a noble endeavor, that their leaders knew what they were doing, and that the fight was absolutely warranted. By the time the war had ended none of these beliefs survived. Trust in the country's leadership -- royalty, military and political officials, clergy... God -- all but disappeared. The leaders lied or kept the truth hidden, and journalists felt obliged to write positive stories because telling the truth invited prosecution. "People began to stay at home rather than go to church, let down by the holy men themselves who clearly ‘do not believe what they preach’… A conspiracy not to speak the truth about the terrible reality of war had grown up even within the Church and people had stopped listening. Words from the pulpit floated down on silent, empty pews."

The war's end brought with it mass unemployment, unimaginable grief, divorce rates three times higher than they had been before the war, and daily encounters with maimed and hideously deformed survivors: amputees, blasted faces covered by inexpressive, inhuman metal masks. As a matter of policy enacted in 1915, the bodies of soldiers who had perished in the fields of France were not brought home. Often their remains were unidentifiable. Their families were thus not able to experience any closure: there was always the possibility that their father/son/brother was still alive somewhere. As Nicolson notes, " Lack of evidence gave rise to an inability to believe in death." For a great many, including such luminaries as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, this uncertainty led them to parlors where seances took place.

And then, of course, there was the so-called Spanish flu that killed millions more -- in the trenches and at home.

For me, one of the most unsettling things in the book (because its cynicism is so shockingly vile) had to do with how, late the war, businesses saw the war as an opportunity for profit. "In England newspapers carried advertisements for guided tours to the battlefields much as pre-war tourists had been enticed by special deals to seaside towns. Prices for package trips to the ‘Devastated Areas’ included hotels and cars and even an officer guide, if so desired, promoting an eerie holiday atmosphere. Visitors were recommended to bring their own food and to ensure they were dressed for the cold, while ammunition boxes that lay discarded everywhere conveniently suggested themselves as picnic tables, upended and laid with sandwiches, in the middle of this silent wasteland. (Nicolson remarks, with obvious and warranted distaste, that the Michelin Tyre Company began publishing illustrated guidebooks to the battlefields even before the war was over.)

Let me close by sharing two more passages. The first gives some sense of the scale of devastation wrought by the war. In an effort to find some suitable way to honor the sacrifices of the fallen (and, equally, to distract from the culpability of the country's leaders), a yearly public shared silence was ordered and a cenotaph -- an empty tomb for the unknown soldiers -- was constructed (at first as a temporary structure the, in 1920, as a permanent memorial on Whitehall). "It was estimated,"Nicolson tells us, "that if, instead of the living, the British dead had been assembled to march, three and a half days would have elapsed before all those who had died would have been able to file past the monument."

The second comes from the pen of the poet and British veteran Siegfried Sassoon. Its devastating furious power needs no commentary:

"I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go."

[Jaylia3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Great Silence Juliet Nicolson has a way of accumulating details that made me feel as if I was living in post-WWI Britain. Using sources that included archives, letters, diaries, newspaper articles and even interviews Nicholson tells moving personal anecdotes about both well known and lesser known British citizens coping with the aftermath of a war that forever changed the social order. Every class from royal to commoner fought in the war, which helped change the way people thought. After time in the trenches, a life in domestic service no longer looked so attractive to the lower classes, leaving aristocrats with a shortage of household help. Unlikely friendships and romances developed, including the romance that inspired D. H. Laurence's book Lady Chatterley's Lover. Watches strapped onto wrists--originally designed for WWI aerial fighters--began so wildly popular they began to take the place of pocket watches. So many men were maimed and disfigured that plastic surgery methods were first developed. Men with facial injuries that were not able to get plastic surgery often wore individually cast metal masks painted to match their skin tone--masks they wore for the rest of their lives and even after death since many were eventually buried in them. So many men were killed that the decision was made to not bring any bodies home to be buried, leading to the world's first Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I was eager to read this book after reading Nicolson's The Perfect Summer and I was not disappointed. Diana Manners, now Lady Diana Cooper, is one of the characters from the first book who makes an appearance again here. Of special interest to Mitford sister fans like me are the stories about their lone brother Tom as a school boy.

[Angela Hoisington Ibrahim · Rating 2 out of 5]

The topic is fascinating but the author relies too much on a few middle/upper class family stories to make this a good read. At times, the book includes a laundry list of items and prices that I felt were taken directly from an issue of the Times. I myself can go on the Web and do that...I expect an author to take such information and weave it in to the context, the people and make us care why the prices even mattered.

Disappointed is my one word review.

[Val · Rating 1 out of 5]

'In 1918, 77% of households were renting – of which 1% were socially renting, while the remaining 23% were owner occupiers.' (From A Century of Home Ownership and Renting in England and Wales, Part of the 2011 Census Analysis by The Office for National Statistics.)
Most male homeowners (those over twenty one) could vote and in 1918 women over the age of 30 who met minimum property qualifications or were married to men who did could vote as well. We now had full representation, Hooray! Suffragettes had fought and suffered for this right and they are to be revered, but quite how represented the 77% who paid rent felt about the fact that the landlord's wife could now vote is not considered in this book. There were changes to allow heads of households in social housing or privately rented housing where the landlords kept good records to vote as well, but the author does not consider this important enough to mention until a rather confused treatment some ninety pages later. If we add together reducing the voting age for men, votes for women and the relaxation of property ownership rules, it is still some way off universal representation.
Nicolson's chapters about wounded and shell-shocked veterans are generally compassionate and sympathetic. The author is also sympathetic towards those soldiers waiting to be demobbed and considers it unfair that those who had jobs to return to were demobbed first. Obviously men wanted to go home, but since soldiers were paid and fed while unemployed men were not I would not think 'unfair' encompassed the situation. She soon moves on from her muddled, over generalised and often dismissive coverage of the majority of people in Britain into areas she is more comfortable with, the activities of the wealthy minority and covers some ephemeral subjects in great detail. Some people might find these goings on fascinating and enjoy that part of the book; I don't, but more significantly I consider them out of place in a book about the aftermath of war.
Nicolson, as her title suggests, covers the Two Minute Silence and King George V's worries that people would not know the time accurately (a valid concern addressed by firing guns or mortars and tolling bells to announce it). She also includes a quote from a schoolboy's diary, 'A disgusting idea of artificial nonsense and sentimentality. If people have lost sons and fathers, they should think of them whenever the grass is green or Shaftesbury Avenue is brightly lighted, not for two minutes on the anniversary of a disgraceful day of national hysteria. No one thought of the dead last year. Why should they now?'. He has a point, which Nicolson misses, the bereaved and the veterans had not forgotten the dead, perhaps the Great Silence performed the function of shaming the pleasure-seeking into remembering them too.
She also covers the burying of an unknown soldier and the second Great Silence well, apart from the list of 'all the countries which fought in the war'. She lists Australia, Belgium, France, India, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal and South Africa, mentions Germany and dismisses America (sic) as too busy to stop. India was not to be a separate country for nearly thirty years, so why not mention all the other colonies and former colonies of European powers in Africa, Asia, North and South America or Australasia which provided troops, or soon to be independent Ireland, or Russia which lost more soldiers than any other country, or Greece, or Japan, or Serbia, or Romania, or China, or Thailand, or Nepal, or Denmark and Luxembourg (which were invaded and suffered lost lives), or on the other side any of the new countries founded after the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, or even the old ones, or Bulgaria, or Azerbaijan (and I have probably still not given a complete list)? It was the First World War, not a war between a few First World countries.
Sometimes personal remembrances and stories can add a lot to a book. In this one I would rather the author had left them out, or chosen them with a lot more relevance and reverence. Her chosen representatives 'for whom the years preceding and following the Great Silence were especially significant' are a soldier, an undergraduate, a bohemian, a newly married socialite, a duke, a cook, an artist, a surgeon, a war hero, a ten-year-old boy, a four-year-old girl, a butler, a dress designer and the Queen. The soldier, the undergraduate and the bohemian wrote their memoirs; read them instead of this book. The socialite goes up onto a roof to watch fireworks, falls through a skylight, breaks a leg, goes to a victory ball or two in a wheelchair and takes drugs. The duke sells one of his houses and some land and blows up his greenhouse instead of simply not heating it. The cook was a maid and got promoted to cook. The artist paints masks to cover mutilated faces; this is relevant to the immediate post-war period, as is the surgeon, who experiments in plastic surgery; check the BBC programme archive if you are interested in facial reconstruction and masking. The war hero is T. E. Lawrence and you can read about him elsewhere or watch the film. The boy thinks the food at his public school is good, but would still like extra tuck from home. The girl remembers kneeling with her mother for the two-minute silence, or remembers her mother telling her she did, this has a certain emotional shorthand appeal. The butler thinks the standard of domestic staff available during and after the war was not as it had been. There are several dress designers, one of them launches a new look. The Queen is emotionally moved by wounded soldiers and the death of her epileptic son. There is now no need for you to read this book for the personal stories and you certainly would not want to read it for the historical analysis.

[Sarah Coller]

I am positive this is an interesting and worthwhile read---but I just can't read it right now. Not only am I dealing with the grief of losing my father, I feel like our world is on the brink of WWIII and when I read these accounts of the horrific circumstances surrounding the young men of WWI, I can't help but insert the faces of my own three grown sons. This is too hard for me to read right now, but I did appreciate a couple quotes relating to grief:

"Grief is an iceberg of a word concealing beneath its innocent simplicity a dangerous mass of confusion and rage. Bereavement follows stages, and if a cycle can be identified within these stages, then the comfort found in reaching the final stage is often dashed with the realisation that circles have no endings."

"Slowly, slowly, the wound to the soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise which only slowly deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then that the terrible after-effects have to be encountered at their worst." -- D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a lot of interesting things in this book, but I felt it was poorly written. For me, there were too many little anecdotes about people or events that weren't tied in with anything else. However, parts of it were fascinating. I especially valued the parts about Harold Gillies and his pioneering plastic surgery work. I've read a little about the "gueules cassees" as the French call the soldiers whose faces were so horribly damaged, but I didn't know much about the reconstructive work that was done on them. I was also very interested in the account of the idea for the 2 minute silence and the history of the Cenotaph.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated this book, though I found the narrator a little annoying. I only stuck with the book as I sped up the playback to 1.5x speed. This probably resulted in my feelings that the book seemed to jump around rather, from one set of people to another to another. But it’s a good book and contains a lot of information.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not critical enough of her themes. Was 1920's plastic surgery really all that successful? Just as an example. Too muddled.

[Booknblues · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a bit of a history buff and seem drawn to certain periods of history. One such period is the time after World War I or The Great War. This seem to be such a time of change and upheaval, so I was pleased to find, Juliet Nicholson's The Great Silence 1918-1920: Living in the Shadow of the Great War about England during this time.

One thing about The Great War to End All Wars, is that it was extremely brutal. The deaths and wounding were astronomical and added to that was the great pandemic of 1918 also known as The Spanish Flu. Nicholson takes a look at this in her book. She titles her chapters such things as Anger, Hopelessness, Performing, Honesty, Release, Expectation, Yearning, Dreaming, Surviving, Resignation and Hope with separate chapters for Armistice Day of 1919 & 1920.

Nicholson draws from many individuals to tell the story of the experience of these years. This made the book somewhat fragmented and I thought some of the examples did not best illustrate the chapter titles.

There were several things I was quite struck with. I've noted that often wars, unfortunately do propel medical advances forward. I found the development of plastic surgery during this time quite interesting as well as the need for it, sadly.

I was moved by the decision to have a two minute Great Silence on Armistice Day 1919. I think that this must have been quite an experience.

If this is a time you are interested in perhaps you should read this book. There were so many interesting details.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Silence covers the two years in Britain between the days the guns fell silent ending the Great War and the constriction of the Cenotaph and internment of the Unknown Soldier on 11 November 2020.

Its a great popular history overall but the bits that I found most interesting were those that dealt with the aftermath of soldiers returning home, particularly the chapters that dealt with the difficulties soldiers had adapting to life back home and the special challenges faced by those who had lost limbs or suffered horribly disfiguring facial injuries. These parts of the book were genuinely touching and even heartbreaking.
The bits that worked less well were the gossipy chapters that focussed on the upper classes, although I did find the chapter about the difficulties that they had finding servants for their massive estates to be strangely compelling! Coco Chanel and Picasso make cameo appearances that seem to be solely for the sake of dropping iconic names into the book.

What is surprising about this book is the topics it does not cover. The Spanish Flu receives remarkably little coverage despite its social and heath impacts of the pandemic, the Treaty of Versailles and the ongoing conflict in Russia where the British army lent support to the White Russian forces receive the briefest of mentions. Its focus is very much on the social aspects of the immediate post-war era.

The book also touches on the changes that the war and post-war period brought for women, with greater expectations for participation in the workforce, the achievement of female suffrage in 1918 and the election of the first female MPs in 1919. While 'The Great Silence' will not satisfy those with a deep interest in female suffrage and parliamentary participation this was a key movement of the period, duly acknowledged.

What a great concept for a book and well executed.

[Nancy Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author makes history come alive from Armistice Day 1918 to the day exactly two years later when a nameless British soldier is dug up on a French battlefield, given a homecoming fit for a king, and is laid to rest in the Tomb of the Unknown at Westminster Abbey. Her research was extensive, including letters, newspapers, journals, archives, and interviews with survivors and their relatives, and has written a beautiful memorial filled with fascinating anecdotes and historical facts, so well done that when you reach the end of the book you feel as if you have lived it. (There is an exceptionally fascinating section on the work done to improve plastic surgery techniques to assist the men with horrific head and neck injuries.)

[David Steele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely writing. I really enjoyed the stories contained within this history, but the upper-class focus was a bit relentless. It would have been more interesting if the accounts were a bit less Brideshead Revisited and more When the Boat Comes in occasionally, but I suppose the author could only work with the available journals and articles from the time. The bias reflects the obsessions of that era.

[Doris Raines · Rating 3 out of 5]

I LIKE THIS BOOK.

[Pallas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feels like the author picked difficult task. How do you sum up a vast time period without focusing on a specific topic? We get a little of this and a little of that without any real focus. Some parts are better than others but all in all maybe the author took on too much and should have focused on one topic. It feels a little vague but with some interesting parts.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Either I didn’t listen much in school or it was censored like crazy- that was my first thought with just the first few chapters.

This book really pulled me in, I love history and wanted to read about WWI from the British social/emotional standpoint. The author did an amazing job in sympathizing with the returning soldiers. I was absolutely shocked at how society seemed to shun them! That part was definitely not something reviewed in history books- but should I be surprised- not really. It was a time that journalist were censored and told that they couldn’t write about the true hell the soldiers were going through.
Not only did the soldiers have to put their life on the line- they had to come home to people- their friends, family and loved ones cowering away from their disfigurement. That seemed to transition nicely into “plastic surgery”. How an artist was able to sculpt masks to help others cope with the scars of war but even that wasn’t enough. The masks lacked emotions- since they were crafted from metal- and that started to “scare” people. I couldn’t believe how vain society was. It blew me away.
I also was shocked at how many soldiers were left where they were killed. They couldn’t identify or bring back the soldiers. That pulled at my heart.

It then goes into the influenza epidemic and the grave of the unknown soldier as a way to try to give society some closure.

Although it was packed with a lot of information, history and viewpoints some parts felt unnecessary- a lady’s addiction to cocaine/morphine, an affair, and the Kings hesitation for the two minutes of silence. Even with some of the side tracks- I would recommend. It’s packed with history and I learned so much!

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where I got the book: bought retail with a Borders gift card, in a huge rush after the bankruptcy was announced. It had been on my TBR list for a while.

The Great Silence is a snapshot of Britain just after World War I. It covers the period from when the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918, to late 1920 when the body of the Unknown Soldier was interred in Westminster Abbey. It covers subjects as diverse as shell shock, plastic surgery for horrendous facial wounds, the Paris Peace Conference, birth control, and the recreational use of drugs by a generation who desperately wanted to forget the recent past.

One thing I really liked about this book was the way the lives and memories of ordinary and extraordinary people are tapped to provide juicy little snippets of information that brought me much nearer to the subjects under discussion. I felt that I got a good sense of what a period of intense mental and physical agony did to the psyche of an entire country. I've always loved the novels of that period for what they said and didn't say about the First World War: those four years were so clearly the dividing point between a strictly ordered world of class distinctions and certainty and the modern world of social mobility and experimentation. The Great Silence is a good companion volume for readers with an interest in the period.

It's not a deep work of history: I even found a couple of potential howlers and one definite one (a line suggesting that the Titanic sank in 1902). And yet The Great Silence had the considerable merit of being interesting and readable, and I'm a great supporter of popularizing history.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully evocative and sympathetic look at the darker side of the post-war period. Nicolson reveals the inevitable sadness that lurked under the celebration of peace. She shows the grief of the many that were unable to bury their loved ones and so were left without a sense of closure. We meet the wounded and disabled veterans, struggling to support themselves, and learn how the government calculated benefits for amputees depending on where the amputation was made. Nicholson shows the unfairness of the government policy that gave no compensation to hideously disfigured men--apparently damage above the neck deserved no compensation. Unemployment, low wages and housing shortages led to social unrest. But she also introduces us to the heroic doctor who pioneered plastic surgery in order to help the facially disfigured veterans. Nicolson makes it all vivid by introducing us to individuals, rich and poor, old and young, using their words whenever possible. Ending the book with the establishment of the tomb of the unknown soldier, Nicolson shows us how it helped bring closure to so many grieving people. We are left with the words of a young boy, attending the ceremony with his widowed mother, as he exclaims at all of the wreaths and bouquets, "What a lovely garden Daddy has got." Anger, grief and hope lived in the shadow of the great war.

[Bekah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before reading I had read some reviews about this book. Some of the reviews were saying that this book spent too much time telling stories and not enough time giving evidence on which I quit agree with. The book is really just a collection of stories of real life characters which normally would be great if the author was able to actually weave in the stories to the main point of the book. 90% of the time Nicolson would intrigue you into the telling of an interesting story of a first person account and then all of a sudden the story would abruptly end. Not only would she not tell what happened to the character but she wouldn't even tie in the story to her book. I love reading history books but this was a struggle to finish. If you do pick this book up and find it hard to finish PLEASE PLEASE at least read chapter 9 about the one year anniversary of WWI. That chapter is really the only reason why I gave this book 3 stars because the author did a fantastic job of retelling that story.

[BookBec · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's unclear whether this is meant to be read as a book or as snippets of information and anecdotes. When I tried reading it straight through, I was annoyed by the constant jumping around, as the author offered a tidbit of information about one character and then rapidly shifted focus to another ... and then others. But when I gave up on that approach and tried putting the book down for days (or weeks) and then reading a single chapter at a time, I was annoyed that the author expected me to keep track of the many characters mentioned in previous chapter snippets.

There are indeed interesting anecdotes here, details that give insight to the time, and useful historical context. But overall this book doesn't work as a cohesive piece of writing.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 2 out of 5]

to be totally frank, I was more than a little disappointed and a little bit bored by the end. From the initial descriptions I read of the book, and even the author's introduction, I thought each chapter was going to be a snapshot of a person from that time between the wars, and how their lives changed and intersected. Not at all. Some historical bits tied together loosely by some more personal historical bits. Definitely could have used a narrative thread, or abandoned the narrative altogether in favor of something else (something far drier though). Gorgeous cover though.