Full name: The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm

Author: Juliet Nicolson Year: 2006 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Non Fiction, Historical fiction Purchase/reserch links: Amazon Goodreads LibraryThing ISBNs: 9780802143679

The Perfect Summer chronicles a glorious English summer a century ago when the world was on the cusp of irrevocable change. Through the tight lens of four months, Juliet Nicolson's rich storytelling gifts rivet us with the sights, colors, and feelings of a bygone era. That summer of 1911 a new king was crowned and the aristocracy was at play, bounding from one house party to the next. But perfection was not for all. Cracks in the social fabric were showing. The country was brought to a standstill by industrial strikes. Temperatures rose steadily to more than 100 degrees; by August deaths from heatstroke were too many for newspapers to report. Drawing on material from intimate and rarely seen sources and narrated through the eyes of a series of exceptional individuals -- among them a debutante, a choirboy, a politician, a trade unionist, a butler, and the Queen -- The Perfect Summer is a vividly rendered glimpse of the twilight of the Edwardian era. Similar books: The Great Silence by Juliet Nicolson The Kings and Queens of England by Nicholas Best Austerity Britain by David Kynaston 1939 by Anne de Courcy A History of Ancient Britain by Neil Oliver In Search of England by Michael Wood The Long Weekend by Adrian Tinniswood The Domesday Book by Thomas Hinde The Making of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr The Morbid Age by Richard Overy Family Britain: 1951-57 by David Kynaston The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy by David Cannadine Foundation by Peter Ackroyd Monarchy by David Starkey Unnatural Murder by Anne Somerset Miracles and Massacres by Glenn Beck What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool Persian Fire by Tom Holland Under a Flaming Sky by Daniel James Brown SPQR by Mary Beard