After the grim austerity of the First World War London enjoyed one of its brightest decades. The 1920s saw Londoners drowning their sorrows in a surfeit of dancing and parties. The Season regained its former glory, but debutantes enjoyed new-freedom and, along with Edward the Prince of Wales, visited the newly formed nightclubs- even those with slightly disreputable reputations such as the Kit Kat Club.
This was the age of the Society Hostess; Lady Londonderry, Lady Cunard, Mrs Greville and others competed fiercely for literary and artistic lions to fill their salons. Cecil Beaton, Somerset Maugham, Charlie Chaplin and Ramsay MacDonald were prizes no hostess could resist. The hostesses lured their prey with exquisite food, unusual entertainments and dazzling conversation.
The Bloomsbury Group met with rather more erudite intentions. Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Aldous Huxley and John Maynard Keynes met in private houses for literary and philosophic discussions.
Massive unemployment in the 1930s among the rather less fortunate members of society paved the way for the rise of Mosley’s fascist party. Unity and Diana Mitford, Harold Nicholson and other aristocrats were also attracted by the lustre Mosley gave to right-wing politics. However, war was on the horizon and, as Scott Fitzgerald said, the upper classes were enjoying ‘borrowed time’.
