THOSE WILD, BRIGHT YOUNG PEOPLE

When I started to write A Manner of Walking, I didn’t have a title. I didn’t have a plot as such. I had a setting: a blacksmith's shop; I had a time: the 1920s. The 1920s in Britain were a period of depression and mass unemployment, but other images came to mind, too.

When I thought of the 1920s, I would think of the characters made famous by F. Scott Fitzgerald, including the Great Gatsby; of the society written about by Evelyn Waugh in “Vile Bodies”; of the Charleston and "flappers", images of the "jazz age" and, among certain sections of the higher classes of society, a spirit of wanton abandon.

         Like a lot of people, I was particularly attracted to reading about the "Bright Young People" of the day. In my book, these are epitomised by Penrose, my lead character, and the "Queen Victoria Square set". You will read all about their mischief making. 

 There was one book I was keen to get hold of: "Society Racket" by Patrick Balfour. It was available in certain libraries only, but I wanted my own copy, and managed to get a first edition second-hand. Written in 1933, It looks back on the 1920s as a bygone age. I have included a snippet from in as a foreword to A Manner of Walking: "The ’twenties were a turbulent epoch, but vital. We fiddled while London burned. We ate, we drank, we were merry, for we knew that today we should die."

Extraordinary writing. I began to warm to the theme of the contrast between the “Bright Young People” and “normal” society. It had to be a central plank of my novel.