The central question for Taylor, as it was for Green and Carpenter, is: why did the BYP behave as outrageously as they did? Essentially, they were reacting against the Great War years of their childhood. Many of the men felt guilt that they had been too young to serve in it. The generation a few years older than themselves which might have restrained them had been wiped out. Everyone felt the need of a bit of razzle and dazzle. I wonder if one might take this theme further. Is it just possible that the BYP thought: the generation before us wasted their lives in the trenches; we’ll waste ours in nightclubs? Arguably, what Siegfried Sassoon’s scarlet-faced generals did to the flower of Britain’s youth in the war was far more heinous than swigging cocktails, taking drugs or having homosexual affairs.

In the spirit of BYP frivolity something trivial has caught my eye: Evelyn Waugh, Harold Acton and Elizabeth Ponsonby all had fathers called Arthur — a name probably inspired in that generation by Tennyson’s poems. Perpetrating a Mitfordian pun, you could say those BYP suffered from arthuritis. In his play After the Dance Terence Rattigan, always so in tune with the zeitgeist, gave a character hostile to the BYP the name Arthur Powers. Taylor describes the play as ‘one of the subtler valedictions pronounced upon the Bright Young People’. He adds:

‘I don’t think one should ever grudge young people the form of escape they choose, however childish it is,’ John responds to Arthur’s complaint about John’s party. ‘I think they are very wise.’ There are worse epitaphs.

Yes, indeedy.

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