Living in the past – the joys of historical research

I’ve been living in the past a lot lately. In 1927, to be precise – which is when the novel I’m currently writing is set. Every day, I get on the Jubilee Line and travel back in time, to an era when there were no computers, no mobile phones, no televisions and not very many motorcars; when few households had telephones and quite a number were without inside lavatories. Central heating was unknown, except for the rich – who of course were also the only ones able to afford the other amenities of modern life we now take for granted, such as refrigerators, washing-machines, and vacuum-cleaners.

Not that most of these well-to-do people expected to do their own household chores: even in the late 1920s, with many who had once worked ‘in service’ preferring to earn their living in factories or shops, the front pages of The Times for this period are full of advertisements for ‘Housemaids’ (‘must be good-tempered’) ‘Cook-Generals’ (‘good references essential’), and ‘Between-maids’ (‘titled family; four servants kept’); as well as those for chauffeurs, butlers and gardeners.

Other glimpses into this now-vanished world are offered by the advertisements, which in those days were illustrated by hand-drawn images (although photographs were starting to appear). Here, then, are the latest in ‘charming dinner or dance frocks… exact copies of Paris models… made of rich quality chiffon attractively finished with draped frills… handsomely ornamented with silver bugle-beads and sequins.’ Here are ‘real lizard’ shoes at 35 shillings a pair; ‘jumper suits’ in ‘fine quality wool Stockinette, in Wine, Bois de Rose, Fawn, Almond, Powder Blue and Cedar’ at 6 guineas; ‘becoming felt hats’, in ‘delightful new Spring colours’ at 21 shillings, and of course ‘men’s suitings’ in ‘every pleasing shade of blue, grey and brown’.

Suitably clad, one might venture forth, to see ‘Lady Luck’ at the Carlton Theatre, or ‘On Approval’ at the Fortune. ‘The Desert Song’ was still packing them in at Drury Lane; while for those in search of less elevated amusements, ‘The Glad Eye’, at the Astoria Cinema in Charing Cross Road was doing almost as good business as ‘The White Slave’ at the Capitol, Haymarket. While sitting back to enjoy the show, you might light up a Craven ‘A’ (‘made specially to prevent sore throats’), or a De Reszke, since ‘wherever the right people meet, there also will you meet the right cigarette…’

Or, wearing a ‘dressing-gown of pure silk foulard’ (him) or a ‘rich printed chiffon Tea-frock’ (her), you could relax at home with the papers, keeping up with the details of the latest crime story (the Charing Cross Trunk Murder was enthralling the public that year) or the goings-on of the ‘Smart Set’ in St Tropez (‘Countess Buxton distributed the prizes at the fancy-dress dance at the Grand Hotel. The prize-winners included Lady Alethea Buxton and the Hon. Daisy Dixon…’). You could listen to music on your newly acquired radiogram: ‘Touch a Switch, and Bring the Gayest Dance Bands to Your Home!’ Or you could reach for the latest bestseller, by Ethel M Dell or Elinor Glyn.

Which is what I’ve been doing, too. Because powerfully evocative as back-issues of newspapers are, there’s a limit to how much journalism one can digest. Novels are a different matter – and there’s nothing that conjures up the atmosphere of a particular era in history better than the fiction published at the time. So, these past few months, my reading has consisted of the novels and short stories of Dorothy L Sayers, Marjory Allingham, E F Benson, P G Wodehouse, Rose Macaulay, Michael Arlen, Agatha Christie, John Galsworthy, Pamela Frankau, and oh, Elinor Glyn. (I’ve also re-read James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf, D H Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, Richard Aldington, Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, and Ford Madox Ford, but it has to be said that it isn’t always the overtly literary novels that give you the most intense flavour of the times.)

Anyway, here they are – my top 20 novels of the 1920s. They’re a mixture of the uncompromisingly literary and the unashamedly popular – which, it has to be said, rather sums up the era, as famous for its film stars, outlandish-sounding cocktails and dance crazes (the Black Bottom, anyone?) as for innovative works of literature such as The Wasteland. As T S Eliot himself would have put it:

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag –
It’s so elegant
So intelligent…

– which is a pretty good description of these ‘Jazz Age’ novels.

Ulysses by James Joyce – published in 1922, and arguably the most significant work of the Modernist era, it famously chronicles the events of a single day in Dublin: 16th June 1904.
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann – another mind-blowing Modernist blockbuster, published in 1924, this takes place in a sanatorium in Davos in the years leading up to the Great War.
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald – published in 1925, Fitzgerald’s masterpiece is a suitably cynical portrayal of the Roaring Twenties at their most divinely decadent.
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway – published in 1926, this offers further insights into the jaded, dissolute world of a generation mentally and physically damaged by the First World War.
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf – published in 1925, this describes another ‘Day in the Life’ – this time of a wealthy Society lady planning a party.
Women in Love by D H Lawrence – published in 1920, Lawrence’s bleak portrayal of relations between the sexes still retains the power to unsettle.
The Apes of God by Wyndham Lewis – published in 1930, but set in 1926, Lewis’s satirical magnum opus caricatures a range of ‘bourgeois-bohemian’ types, ranging from wealthy art collectors to would-be artists.
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh – published in 1928, Waugh’s first novel is another satirical broadside against the excesses of the Bright Young Things.
Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley – published in 1928, Huxley’s brilliant roman à clef vividly evokes the political, intellectual and artistic conflicts of the 1920s.
No More Parades by Ford Madox Ford – published in 1925, the second novel in Ford’s tetralogy about the First World War finds its hero Christopher Tietjens caught between the horrors of the Western Front and the anguish of a failing marriage.
Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington – published in 1929, Aldington’s excoriating attack on the hypocrisy of those who supported the First World War still feels very contemporary.
The Silver Spoon by John Galsworthy – published in 1926, the penultimate novel in the six-part Forsyte Saga, this account of mid-1920s London life as lived by socialite Fleur Mont and her husband Michael, an up-and-coming MP, is full of vivid detail and surprisingly sharp social comment.
Told By An Idiot by Rose Macaulay – published in 1923, this quasi-autobiographical saga, follows the fortunes of a single family through the religious and intellectual upheavals of the 1880s to the post-war cynicism of the 1920s.
The Green Hat by Michael Arlen – published in 1924, Arlen’s tale of the femme fatale in the eponymous chapeau became an instant bestseller.
The Black Minute by Pamela Frankau – published in 1929, this collection of stories chronicles the precarious, sybaritic existence of a group of expatriates in the South of France.
Lucia in London by E F Benson – one of six ‘Lucia’ novels, published between 1920 and 1939, this finds the shamelessly social-climbing heroine in London for the Season. Delicious stuff.
Very Good, Jeeves! By P G Wodehouse – published in 1930, this collection of stories about the hapless Bertie Wooster and his inimitable ‘man’, Jeeves, captures the spirit of 1920s metropolitan life in some of the most dazzlingly witty prose ever written.
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L Sayers – although published in 1930, this murder mystery, featuring the wonderfully insouciant Lord Peter Wimsey, draws on the author’s experiences during the 1920s as a copywriter in an advertising company not unlike the fictional Pym’s Publicity Ltd.
Man and Maid by Elinor Glyn – one of Glyn’s many highly-charged romantic novels, this was published in 1922, and describes a love affair between a cynical aristocrat, traumatised by his experiences during the First World War, and the young woman he engages as his secretary.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie – the first of what was to be an extraordinary outpouring of detective fiction was published in 1920, and displays many of the hallmarks of the genre: a country house setting, a family at war with itself, a mysterious death by poisoning, and the appearance of a certain M. Poirot…