Juliet Nicolson
Author of The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm
About the Author
Juliet, Nicolson is the author of two works of history, The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age and The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm, and a novel. Abdication. She lives with her husband in East Sussex, not far from show more Sissinghurst, where she spent her childhood. She has two daughters, Clemmie and Flora, and one granddaughter, Imogen. show less
Works by Juliet Nicolson
The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age (2009) 393 copies, 16 reviews
Associated Works
Good Behavior: Being a Study of Certain Types of Civility (2008) — Foreword, some editions — 48 copies
Charleston Press No. 1 — Contributor — 2 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1954-06-09
- Gender
- female
- Education
- University of Oxford (St. Hugh's College)
- Occupations
- journalist
writer
memoirist
social historian
novelist
literary agent (show all 7)
publishing editor - Relationships
- Nicolson, Harold (grandfather)
Nicolson, Nigel (father)
Sackville-West, Vita (grandmother)
Nicolson, Adam (brother)
Nicolson, Benedict (uncle) - Short biography
- Juliet Nicolson was born in Bransgore, England, the daughter of Nigel Nicolson, the writer and Member of Parliament, and Philippa Tennyson d’Eyncourt. Her paternal grandparents were Vita Sackville West and Harold Nicolson, and she was brought up partly at their home at Sissinghurst. She studied English Literature at Oxford University and worked in publishing in the UK and USA from 1976 to 1994. On returning to London, she became a literary agent and then a freelance journalist for leading British publications. The Perfect Summer (2006) was her first book. It was followed by The Great Silence (2009), the novel Abdication (2012), Frostquake (2021), and a family memoir, A House Full of Daughters (2016). She and her first husband, James Macmillan-Scott, had two daughters. Her second marriage was to Charles Anson, an international financial communications consultant.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Bransgore, England, UK
- Places of residence
- London, England, UK
Sissinghurst, Kent, England, UK
New York, New York, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
Although the publisher classifies this book as “history”, it read less like a history text and more like verbal cinematography, with the lens of the author’s eye sweeping back and forth over England in the summer of 1911 just before WWI. It was an unusually hot summer, with weeks of temperatures in the high 90s or low 100s. Farmers struggled, there were water shortages, crops failed, animals faltered, people died of heat related illnesses or went mad from the heat, while the moneyed show more classes fled to the seashore or to their country estates and the working poor went hops picking for relief from the stifling, disease-riddled East end of London.
With access to private papers and letters, as well as having the rarified vantage point of being the granddaughter of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, Nicolson allows us a delicious insight into the activities of the upper crust in this era just before the war (yes, I used the word "delicious"...but it really was). But she doesn’t stop there: the perspective of the serving class, in particular of a butler named Eric Horne, adds zest to the broth. The suffragette movement gets a nod and labour unrest, especially of the dockworkers, is given full play. The change technology creates is given respectful acknowledgement. This book is about all of England at this point in time, not simply the privileged few.
We get a glimpse of an England on the cusp of change. Industrialisation has changed the country forever but the lords and peerage of an older generation cannot encompass the magnitude of the changes which have taken place, or, if they do, cannot accept them. The younger privileged generation gets into trouble as the bored, under-utilised will, although the war would dramatically change all of that, as Nicolson hints.
A young Churchill is strutting out, not the respected leader and orator of the older man he will become but a young cock in love with his own oratory and an over fondness for expensive brandy and cigars. The nascent Bloomsbury group is shaping and forming, with Virginia Stephen beginning to write, Leonard Woolf back from the East and falling in love with her, and artists like Augustus John, Rupert Brooke pivotal in the English arts world. Shy Queen Mary sees her husband, George V crowned that summer. Lady Diana Manners is highly in vogue and always in the news. It all vibrates with unknown (to them) tensions while the reader knows that the balls, the coming out parties, the class system held tightly in old fists will soon blow to tatters in the winds coming from Germany. And yes, the Titanic will sink.
Nicolson doesn’t linger too long on any one situation or person - sometimes I wanted to know more but realised I would have to find out for myself - as the point of the book is to capture the essence of a time which would be forever lost over the period of the coming war. This was the last summer in which that essence would be so rich, so undiluted. It didn’t bother this reader to flit from the donkey carts at the seashore to the salon of a duchess to the House of Lords. Nicolson isn’t weaving a tapestry as much as she is picking out threads from a tapestry already woven, taking a look at them and letting them drop back into the piece. I enjoyed looking at them with her. Recommended. show less
With access to private papers and letters, as well as having the rarified vantage point of being the granddaughter of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, Nicolson allows us a delicious insight into the activities of the upper crust in this era just before the war (yes, I used the word "delicious"...but it really was). But she doesn’t stop there: the perspective of the serving class, in particular of a butler named Eric Horne, adds zest to the broth. The suffragette movement gets a nod and labour unrest, especially of the dockworkers, is given full play. The change technology creates is given respectful acknowledgement. This book is about all of England at this point in time, not simply the privileged few.
We get a glimpse of an England on the cusp of change. Industrialisation has changed the country forever but the lords and peerage of an older generation cannot encompass the magnitude of the changes which have taken place, or, if they do, cannot accept them. The younger privileged generation gets into trouble as the bored, under-utilised will, although the war would dramatically change all of that, as Nicolson hints.
A young Churchill is strutting out, not the respected leader and orator of the older man he will become but a young cock in love with his own oratory and an over fondness for expensive brandy and cigars. The nascent Bloomsbury group is shaping and forming, with Virginia Stephen beginning to write, Leonard Woolf back from the East and falling in love with her, and artists like Augustus John, Rupert Brooke pivotal in the English arts world. Shy Queen Mary sees her husband, George V crowned that summer. Lady Diana Manners is highly in vogue and always in the news. It all vibrates with unknown (to them) tensions while the reader knows that the balls, the coming out parties, the class system held tightly in old fists will soon blow to tatters in the winds coming from Germany. And yes, the Titanic will sink.
Nicolson doesn’t linger too long on any one situation or person - sometimes I wanted to know more but realised I would have to find out for myself - as the point of the book is to capture the essence of a time which would be forever lost over the period of the coming war. This was the last summer in which that essence would be so rich, so undiluted. It didn’t bother this reader to flit from the donkey carts at the seashore to the salon of a duchess to the House of Lords. Nicolson isn’t weaving a tapestry as much as she is picking out threads from a tapestry already woven, taking a look at them and letting them drop back into the piece. I enjoyed looking at them with her. Recommended. show less
Although there have been conflicts since, the Great War of 1914-18 always haunts my imagination on November 11. Thousands of soldiers were killed, and many more suffered horrific injuries, in the senseless sacrifice of nearly a whole generation of husbands, fiancés, fathers and brothers. Yet a way of life died with them, which brought many positive changes to life in England, including women’s rights and employment, new tastes in music and entertainment, but also the loss of past show more traditions and historical buildings. The country was torn between wanting to forget the war and move on with life, and needing to memorialise and mourn for the glorious dead.
'The Great Silence' tells of the years immediately after the Great War, between the Armistice of 1918 and the funeral of the Unknown Warrior in November 1920, evoking the feelings of grief and anger, acknowledgement and hope for the future, experienced by those left behind. Instead of a dry narrative of events, however, witnesses from all walks of life – the Prince of Wales and a soldier named Tommy Atkins, a society hostess and a maid, ten year old Tom Mitford and three year old Pam Parish – recount memories of that time, through interviews, letters and diaries. The pioneering techniques of Harold Gillies, the ‘father of plastic surgery’, who reconstructed the shattered faces (and self-confidence) of soldiers disfigured in the war, and sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd, who created painted tin masks for the men, are in equal parts fascinating and disturbing. Later chapters concentrate on the new generation of women such as Lady Ottoline Morrell, who flirted with war poet Siegfried Sassoon, Oxford graduate Winifred Holtby, and novelist Vera Brittain.
Appropriately, the chapter headings follow the different stages of grief, from shock, both of the soldiers and the after-effects of war on a grieving population, through the release of cinema and dancing, to the acceptance of a new society. I found the chapters on Armistice Day 1919, with the first two minutes silence, and the burial of the Unknown Soldier particularly emotional, as expected, but also the Duke of Devonshire’s reluctant decision to sell Devonshire House in London, which was later demolished (‘sacrifices made in silence’), and art reflecting life in Abel Gance’s film 'J’accuse'!, where ‘dead men on leave’ at Verdun played soldiers rising from the dead in the final scene. Evelyn Waugh dismissed the ceremony of the first ‘Great Silence’ as ‘artificial nonsense and sentimentality’, and even the King thought it was better to look forward rather than remember, but the actual service united the country in grief: ‘Bicycles braked, road menders laid down their spades, telephone operators unplugged their connection boards, factory workers switched off their machinery, dock workers stopped their unloading, school children stopped their lessons …’ Two years later, the same objections were made to bringing home the unidentifiable remains of a British soldier from French soil, but the service at Westminster provided a chance for mourning families to finally shed tears over a coffin and say goodbye to loved ones.
‘A tiny child approached the monument holding his mother’s hand tightly. As he bent to lay a posy among the mass of flowers already there, he shouted in such a loud voice that, despite the huge sob that engulfed his words, the listening crowd thought they must have mistaken his age. “Oh Mummy,” he cried, “what a lovely garden Daddy has got.”’
Even now, almost a century later, it is vitally important that we remember the sacrifice of life and upheaval of society that were the legacies of the Great War. Although the Last Tommy died in 2009, Sir Edwin Lutyens’ cenotaph remains, a permanent symbol in stone to replace the temporary monument constructed out of wood and plaster for the Victory Parade in July, 1919. Juliet Nicolson deftly and respectfully reminds us of the significance of the red poppy worn every November by telling the stories of the men, women and children who lived through the Great War. show less
'The Great Silence' tells of the years immediately after the Great War, between the Armistice of 1918 and the funeral of the Unknown Warrior in November 1920, evoking the feelings of grief and anger, acknowledgement and hope for the future, experienced by those left behind. Instead of a dry narrative of events, however, witnesses from all walks of life – the Prince of Wales and a soldier named Tommy Atkins, a society hostess and a maid, ten year old Tom Mitford and three year old Pam Parish – recount memories of that time, through interviews, letters and diaries. The pioneering techniques of Harold Gillies, the ‘father of plastic surgery’, who reconstructed the shattered faces (and self-confidence) of soldiers disfigured in the war, and sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd, who created painted tin masks for the men, are in equal parts fascinating and disturbing. Later chapters concentrate on the new generation of women such as Lady Ottoline Morrell, who flirted with war poet Siegfried Sassoon, Oxford graduate Winifred Holtby, and novelist Vera Brittain.
Appropriately, the chapter headings follow the different stages of grief, from shock, both of the soldiers and the after-effects of war on a grieving population, through the release of cinema and dancing, to the acceptance of a new society. I found the chapters on Armistice Day 1919, with the first two minutes silence, and the burial of the Unknown Soldier particularly emotional, as expected, but also the Duke of Devonshire’s reluctant decision to sell Devonshire House in London, which was later demolished (‘sacrifices made in silence’), and art reflecting life in Abel Gance’s film 'J’accuse'!, where ‘dead men on leave’ at Verdun played soldiers rising from the dead in the final scene. Evelyn Waugh dismissed the ceremony of the first ‘Great Silence’ as ‘artificial nonsense and sentimentality’, and even the King thought it was better to look forward rather than remember, but the actual service united the country in grief: ‘Bicycles braked, road menders laid down their spades, telephone operators unplugged their connection boards, factory workers switched off their machinery, dock workers stopped their unloading, school children stopped their lessons …’ Two years later, the same objections were made to bringing home the unidentifiable remains of a British soldier from French soil, but the service at Westminster provided a chance for mourning families to finally shed tears over a coffin and say goodbye to loved ones.
‘A tiny child approached the monument holding his mother’s hand tightly. As he bent to lay a posy among the mass of flowers already there, he shouted in such a loud voice that, despite the huge sob that engulfed his words, the listening crowd thought they must have mistaken his age. “Oh Mummy,” he cried, “what a lovely garden Daddy has got.”’
Even now, almost a century later, it is vitally important that we remember the sacrifice of life and upheaval of society that were the legacies of the Great War. Although the Last Tommy died in 2009, Sir Edwin Lutyens’ cenotaph remains, a permanent symbol in stone to replace the temporary monument constructed out of wood and plaster for the Victory Parade in July, 1919. Juliet Nicolson deftly and respectfully reminds us of the significance of the red poppy worn every November by telling the stories of the men, women and children who lived through the Great War. show less
The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age by Juliet Nicolson
As we approach the 100th anniversary of the start of World War One, I think it's pretty much indisputable now that it, and not the second war that followed, was the watershed event of the bloody and unmourned twentieth century. Just as significant as -- and ultimately longer-lasting than -- the political changes that grew out of the war were the social changes that reshaped life in Britain and on the continent. Although we Americans experienced some of these changes, we were (blessedly) show more largely sheltered from the particular changes caused by the destruction of nearly a whole generation of young men. For years after the armistice, Juliet Nicolson writes in this great book, the fact of enormous national and personal loss colored every aspect of life in Britain. For American readers, "The Great Silence" is a powerful, revealing, and ultimately very moving look at the consequences of war and death, not only on "society," but more to the point, on individual men, women, and children.
My initial assumption was that "The Great Silence" would be something like The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain 1918-1939, the classic study of life in Britain between the wars by Robert Graves (who, as it happens, shows up several times in this book). In fact, "The Great Silence" is more narrowly focused in several senses. For one thing, the scope of the book lies mostly between 1918 and 1920 -- or, more precisely, between Armistice Day and the interment of the Unknown Warrior on the second anniversary of the armistice. But more importantly, instead of writing about trends and social movements, or getting mired in statistical or polling data, the author tells her story almost entirely through the eyes of specific people and their stories. What "The Great Silence" ended up reminding me of, far more than "The Long Week-End," was Walter Lord's Day of Infamy: The Classic Account of the Bombing of Pearl Harbor (not an obvious comparison, perhaps, but one that came to me because I've read and re-read Lord's book many times).
But while it's one thing to recount a discrete event like Pearl Harbor through the eyes of the participants, it's something much bigger and (I imagine) more difficult to survey an entire era, across places and social conditions, the same way. Juliet Nicolson has done a remarkable job. Her narrative moves with ease between the high and mighty on one hand and the maimed, destitute, and broken on the other, telling each story with grace and sympathy. In these pages, the Duke of Devonshire and Lady Diana Manners, for instance, share attention with maid Doris Scovell, pioneering and heroic plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, and three-year-old Pam Parish. It's kind of a pontillistic way of telling a story, and indeed I see some reviewers complaining that the author has missed "the big picture."
I would argue the individual stories ARE "the big picture." In fact, because the narrative here is so intensely personal, the sense of grief and loss, of deprivation and pain, can affect the reader as well. Events that were cathartic in their time, like the dedication of the Cenotaph or the interment of the Unknown Warrior mentioned before, can be cathartic for the reader too. But at the same time, "The Great Silence" contains, and ends on, notes of optimism and hope that lift the mood tremendously. They keep this from being a depressing book -- even for modern readers aware of what lies less than two decades ahead. It's an impressive emotional balance.
I should comment, finally, on the jacket design and subtitle chosen (presumably) by Juliet Nicolson's American publisher. When I was sitting with this book on my lap, my wife asked me why I was "reading such a girly book." Indeed, the purple color of the book jacket, the swirling cursive typeface, and the cover image of three young women in pastel dresses are all oddly out of place for this book. If anything, they suggest a romance novel. While my own imagined cover design -- featuring the powerful portrait "Grief" by Hugh Cecil, reproduced and discussed in the book -- might be TOO bleak, I notice the original UK edition of "The Great Silence" features a much more somber photo. It also subtitles the book "Living in the Shadow of the Great War," which I think is more accurate than "Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age," which I think does a disservice to the scope of this book.
So read it with the dust jacket off if you want. But I definitely encourage students of history or social movements, Anglophiles, or just fans of moving stories well told, to read "The Great Silence." It would also be a powerful reminder to those tempted to glorify war, militarism, and "national greatness" of the huge and largely unforeseen costs of blithely sending young men into battle. show less
My initial assumption was that "The Great Silence" would be something like The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain 1918-1939, the classic study of life in Britain between the wars by Robert Graves (who, as it happens, shows up several times in this book). In fact, "The Great Silence" is more narrowly focused in several senses. For one thing, the scope of the book lies mostly between 1918 and 1920 -- or, more precisely, between Armistice Day and the interment of the Unknown Warrior on the second anniversary of the armistice. But more importantly, instead of writing about trends and social movements, or getting mired in statistical or polling data, the author tells her story almost entirely through the eyes of specific people and their stories. What "The Great Silence" ended up reminding me of, far more than "The Long Week-End," was Walter Lord's Day of Infamy: The Classic Account of the Bombing of Pearl Harbor (not an obvious comparison, perhaps, but one that came to me because I've read and re-read Lord's book many times).
But while it's one thing to recount a discrete event like Pearl Harbor through the eyes of the participants, it's something much bigger and (I imagine) more difficult to survey an entire era, across places and social conditions, the same way. Juliet Nicolson has done a remarkable job. Her narrative moves with ease between the high and mighty on one hand and the maimed, destitute, and broken on the other, telling each story with grace and sympathy. In these pages, the Duke of Devonshire and Lady Diana Manners, for instance, share attention with maid Doris Scovell, pioneering and heroic plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, and three-year-old Pam Parish. It's kind of a pontillistic way of telling a story, and indeed I see some reviewers complaining that the author has missed "the big picture."
I would argue the individual stories ARE "the big picture." In fact, because the narrative here is so intensely personal, the sense of grief and loss, of deprivation and pain, can affect the reader as well. Events that were cathartic in their time, like the dedication of the Cenotaph or the interment of the Unknown Warrior mentioned before, can be cathartic for the reader too. But at the same time, "The Great Silence" contains, and ends on, notes of optimism and hope that lift the mood tremendously. They keep this from being a depressing book -- even for modern readers aware of what lies less than two decades ahead. It's an impressive emotional balance.
I should comment, finally, on the jacket design and subtitle chosen (presumably) by Juliet Nicolson's American publisher. When I was sitting with this book on my lap, my wife asked me why I was "reading such a girly book." Indeed, the purple color of the book jacket, the swirling cursive typeface, and the cover image of three young women in pastel dresses are all oddly out of place for this book. If anything, they suggest a romance novel. While my own imagined cover design -- featuring the powerful portrait "Grief" by Hugh Cecil, reproduced and discussed in the book -- might be TOO bleak, I notice the original UK edition of "The Great Silence" features a much more somber photo. It also subtitles the book "Living in the Shadow of the Great War," which I think is more accurate than "Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age," which I think does a disservice to the scope of this book.
So read it with the dust jacket off if you want. But I definitely encourage students of history or social movements, Anglophiles, or just fans of moving stories well told, to read "The Great Silence." It would also be a powerful reminder to those tempted to glorify war, militarism, and "national greatness" of the huge and largely unforeseen costs of blithely sending young men into battle. show less
Good story, enjoyable reading about the exciting events of 1936. The interactions between Wallis Simpson and her school friend, Evangeline Nettleford was an interesting part of the narrative. Neither of them is a nice person. It's excellent historical fiction. Recommended.
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 6
- Also by
- 3
- Members
- 1,554
- Popularity
- #16,576
- Rating
- 3.5
- Reviews
- 69
- ISBNs
- 60
- Languages
- 2