The Sweet and Twenties [INSCRIBED]

Beverley Nichols.

Weidenfeld and Nicolson. London. 1958. First edition, third impression. Red cloth hardback, dust jacket. Inscribed by Nichols on the front free endpaper - 'For Miss U'ren / with all good wishes / Beverley Nichols / 1958'. With an additional signed [not by Nichols] festive gift card card pasted below the original inscription. 247 pages. 16 hors texte black-and-white plates and numerous text illustrations. Jacket designed by Mark Chinnery. English. 220 x 150mm. 0.5kg. . Very good, in very good dust jacket; light shelf wear, some wear along edges and to spine ends, browning to verso of jacket, price-clipped; spotting to edges, some light offsetting to endpapers.

Beverley Nichols' nostalgic look at the decade that brought us the Bright Young Things and the Charleston. He focuses on the highs (and occasional lows) of society and the artistic circles of the 1920s, with chapters such as 'Cause celebre ', 'The hostess with the mostest', 'Sex - and a song' and 'Let's all go down the Strand'. There are appearances from Edith Sitwell, Fred Astaire, Ivor Novello, Noel Coward, Cecil Beaton, Gertrude Lawrence, Elinor Glyn, Syrie Maugham, Lady Colefax, Lady Mendl and Lord Berners. An amusing, gossipy read.