Children of the Sun

"This is a very interesting study. He takes as his two main protagonists Brian Howard and Harold Acton, and describes brilliantly how they constructed this eccentric, upper class Dandy world of aesthetes. Those two leaders were the least talented, whereas the followers – Evelyn Waugh, Cyril Connolly, Anthony Powell, Robert Byron – were the ones with the real talent. Many of them were at Eton, and most of them were at Oxford. Then they went on to continue the party in London, and Italy and France. I think there was certainly that. But importantly it provided the material for some very remarkable literature. So much came out of it. You only have to look at Brideshead Revisited or A Dance to the Music of Time to see. It was all so spectacular and entertaining. Their parents were Victorians, and they wanted to get away from all that. The girls were wearing short skirts and sleeveless dresses, and drugging and drinking – all the things their parents deeply disapproved of. In a kind of iconoclastic mockery, Harold Acton began a mock homage society to the Victorians. Yes, I think they were original. In the next decade, the 1930s, the young men of that era were much more serious – there’s the great movement to the left, and Communism. So the Bright Young Things was a very brief period. That, I think, is part of its attraction."