In this superb follow-up to her detailed snapshot of pre–World War I England, The Perfect Summer, Juliet Nicolson pieces together colorful personalities, historic moments, and intimate details of daily life to create a social history of the two years following the Great War.

"If, instead of looking at the great sweep of history, you take just two years, and you find out the small, everyday things that people of all stations in life were doing—the king and his manservant, the prime minister and the postman—you can convey a sense of the past that no conventional history can offer.... The method enables [the author] to take us into places that even people who think they know something about the period did not know existed.... This is a small treasure-house of a book from a writer who understands the vital importance of small details."—Guardian (London)