The Great Silence - Juliet Nicholson
This history of Britain from 11th November 1918 to 11th November 1920 provides a very readable account of the nation's slow recovery from the Great War - charting the path from stoic weariness, through a gradual acknowledgement of the need to grieve, and finally the desire for some much needed peace and recreation at the dawn of the twenties.
Nicholson's focus is largely biased towards the higher classes, and the focus on London is so deeply ingrained that in certain places the fact that the text is about the capital is only mentioned incidentally. There's also a stronger interest in the prosaic and everyday than the impersonal or theoretical. Which, actually, is entirely suited to my purposes - namely: trying to get a feel on a personal scale for the cultural forces that would shape 1920s England.
1 comment:
I am interested in that time period in U.S. history because that's the year my house was built. :-) Right now, though, I'm reading "The Reshaping of Everyday Life" about life in the U.S. from 1780 to 1840. It's interesting. I'm always imagining what it would have been like to have lived in the past. Although, strictly speaking, I suppose we all have. ;-)
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