Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780374532116)

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

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

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

Author: D. J. Taylor
ISBN-10: 0374532117
ISBN-13: 9780374532116
Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
Language: English
Published: 01/05/2010
Pages: 384
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.79lbs
Size: 8.34h x 5.46w x 1.05d

Review Citation(s):
New York Review of Books 01/10/2010 pg. 20