0:00:13 > 0:00:1785 years ago, the beautiful and the damned of the 1920s
0:00:17 > 0:00:21knew ridicule was nothing to be scared of.
0:00:21 > 0:00:28A world of glitter and glamour became, for a fleeting moment, the centre of the universe.
0:00:33 > 0:00:38They looked like beautiful, hollow creatures and that was the image they tried to cultivate at the time.
0:00:38 > 0:00:45Stephen has gold dust in his hair, he has Vaseline on his eyelids and he has lipstick.
0:00:54 > 0:00:57Banded together in the pursuit of a good time, a killer wardrobe
0:00:57 > 0:01:00and little else, the Bright Young People
0:01:00 > 0:01:04ripped through British society and became notorious.
0:01:04 > 0:01:09There was a kind of perverse wish to behave as irresponsibly and as childishly as they could.
0:01:09 > 0:01:16A lot of drink, in some cases a lot of drugs and some very glamorous locations.
0:01:16 > 0:01:19They are creating this fantasy which is a rejection of the values
0:01:19 > 0:01:22of their parents but also the values of their time.
0:01:23 > 0:01:28The Bright Young Things had a shimmering allure and inevitably the literati followed the glitterati.
0:01:28 > 0:01:31A generation of artists drew inspiration from this flowering
0:01:31 > 0:01:36of doomed youth and they used it to found their reputations.
0:01:36 > 0:01:39People like Cecil Beaton were like the Malcolm McLaren of their day -
0:01:39 > 0:01:43they were popularising it, they were making careers out of this.
0:01:45 > 0:01:48Glamour and celebrity became an industry.
0:01:48 > 0:01:51The cult of personality and the incestuous relationship
0:01:51 > 0:01:54between the Bright Young People and the press is recognisable today.
0:01:54 > 0:01:58I think the rest of the nation was enormously entertained by it
0:01:58 > 0:02:01because it was like the celebrity culture now.
0:02:05 > 0:02:07But who were the real Bright Young People?
0:02:07 > 0:02:10Why were they such a phenomenon?
0:02:10 > 0:02:14And how did something so short-lived come to be so immortalised?
0:02:29 > 0:02:34The inter-war era is an age that we can't help but return to again and again.
0:02:34 > 0:02:36So familiar are its nuances,
0:02:36 > 0:02:40its sense of modernity, that it appears to exert a hold
0:02:40 > 0:02:44and a lasting influence over the collective imagination.
0:02:44 > 0:02:47The same can be said of its great social set.
0:02:47 > 0:02:52The Bright Young Things, party pioneers of the 20th Century.
0:02:52 > 0:02:55I'd have loved to have seen one of the Bright Young People in their heyday.
0:02:55 > 0:03:00They had the most fantastic clothes, the most fantastic conception
0:03:00 > 0:03:02of themselves, the most flamboyant way
0:03:02 > 0:03:08of projecting themselves and it really was as much about identity as it was about vanity.
0:03:08 > 0:03:13Defiantly partying while ignoring life's harsher realities,
0:03:13 > 0:03:18their bitter-sweet world of decadent glamour and outrageous attention-seeking
0:03:18 > 0:03:22holds a mirror to many of our present-day obsessions and fears.
0:03:22 > 0:03:28There was a feeling of hopelessness and part of the partying was just
0:03:28 > 0:03:32to push that away - "Let's go out, lets get drunk, let's not think about it."
0:03:33 > 0:03:37What we recognise in them is the pose of superior entitlement,
0:03:37 > 0:03:41the glossy perfection and idealised lifestyle
0:03:41 > 0:03:45that contemporary luxury brands still sell us today.
0:03:45 > 0:03:49What is different, though, is that the Bright Young People of the 20s
0:03:49 > 0:03:52were not aping the behaviour of a previous generation.
0:03:52 > 0:03:58They were the originals. The Bright Young People are still the very definition of decadent glamour.
0:04:03 > 0:04:07At the very heart of this scene were a select few real Bright Young People -
0:04:07 > 0:04:13absolute stars in their day but whose names have since been almost forgotten.
0:04:14 > 0:04:18Aristocratic aesthetes like the flamboyant Stephen Tennant
0:04:18 > 0:04:22were central to the new social set's rejection of conformity.
0:04:22 > 0:04:25When Stephen left his house,
0:04:25 > 0:04:29there was a reporter there to see him coming out in a football jersey
0:04:29 > 0:04:33and earrings and driving across London in this Electric Brougham,
0:04:33 > 0:04:36which was described as a shop window on wheels
0:04:36 > 0:04:40and he's kind of waving to the people as he goes past - he is this celebrity.
0:04:40 > 0:04:45His slender, androgynous frame, marcel waved hair and wardrobe
0:04:45 > 0:04:50of embroidered silks made him a rebel but also the toast of London!
0:04:50 > 0:04:54Comparisons with people like Boy George or any kind of
0:04:54 > 0:05:00outrageous pop star are very acute - that was what Stephen was.
0:05:00 > 0:05:03In an age before pop stars, Stephen was a pop star.
0:05:05 > 0:05:09Newly freed from their Edwardian skirts and overbearing governesses,
0:05:09 > 0:05:13well-bred, modern girls became party obsessed.
0:05:13 > 0:05:16None more so than Elizabeth Ponsonby.
0:05:16 > 0:05:20This flighty daughter of an MP had a dedication to partying
0:05:20 > 0:05:27that marked her as the 1920s It-girl but would ultimately destroy her.
0:05:27 > 0:05:30For us, it's interesting because of how she died.
0:05:30 > 0:05:33She drank herself to death and she died before she was 40.
0:05:33 > 0:05:39But in the 1920s, she was famous just for being a silly, frivolous girl who went to parties.
0:05:42 > 0:05:45The hard-core hedonism and possibility of fame
0:05:45 > 0:05:49drew high-born hipsters like actress Brenda Dean Paul
0:05:49 > 0:05:53who was there from the scene's very inception.
0:05:53 > 0:05:55There were Bright Young Women
0:05:55 > 0:05:59who were able to sustain this existence more or less on air.
0:05:59 > 0:06:02Brenda Dean Paul, who achieved fame as what was known as
0:06:02 > 0:06:06the society drug addict, as the papers knew her in the early 1930s,
0:06:06 > 0:06:11maintained that she spent several years living on brandy cocktails and salted nuts.
0:06:11 > 0:06:16This outrageous self publicist learned that causing a sensation,
0:06:16 > 0:06:19no matter how tragic, could be made to pay.
0:06:22 > 0:06:26On the fringes of the set, drawn to these wild, glamorous luminaries
0:06:26 > 0:06:31were artists, writers and entertaining types of all backgrounds.
0:06:31 > 0:06:35Some out for what they could get, others revelling in the excess
0:06:35 > 0:06:38but all of them observing and recording.
0:06:38 > 0:06:40It is their interpretation of the scene
0:06:40 > 0:06:44that sustained it and made it both legend and fable.
0:06:47 > 0:06:49Among them Cecil Beaton, John Betjeman,
0:06:49 > 0:06:53Nancy Mitford, Noel Coward and Evelyn Waugh have become synonymous
0:06:53 > 0:07:00with the decade that roared and the beautiful but damned young people who partied to the end.
0:07:00 > 0:07:03In a sense, Evelyn Waugh stood for that generation
0:07:03 > 0:07:06of Bright Young People in that he was a rebel
0:07:06 > 0:07:11and he loved the rebellion of it, the throwing over the rules.
0:07:11 > 0:07:15He also loved getting really drunk.
0:07:15 > 0:07:21At the same time, he knew perfectly well in his heart of hearts that he was not one
0:07:21 > 0:07:28of the Bright Young People. He loved fooling around with them, he was enormously entertained with them,
0:07:28 > 0:07:34he loved their glamour and he wanted to be part of them up to a point
0:07:34 > 0:07:36but he knew he was different.
0:07:36 > 0:07:40Waugh had got to know many of the Bright Young Men at Oxford.
0:07:40 > 0:07:45They belonged to a rather exclusive, Eton-educated, and titled class
0:07:45 > 0:07:48above Waugh's middle-class background but his wit
0:07:48 > 0:07:52and rebellious nature were all he needed to join the Bright Young Society.
0:07:52 > 0:07:56All doors were opened suddenly, among the young anyway,
0:07:56 > 0:08:01and if they were amusing, if they were entertaining,
0:08:01 > 0:08:05then they were acceptable, they were accepted.
0:08:05 > 0:08:09That was the criteria and that was the sole criterion really.
0:08:10 > 0:08:14When the aspiring young writer took to London's Bright Young scene,
0:08:14 > 0:08:21he found in it the characters and back drops for his first two novels - Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies.
0:08:21 > 0:08:25In each book, the Bright Young Things' extravagant partying, dress sense
0:08:25 > 0:08:28and even their affected and arch lexicon is perfectly documented.
0:08:28 > 0:08:34I think Stephen Fry's film Bright Young Things which is based on Evelyn Waugh's book Vile Bodies
0:08:34 > 0:08:41is actually really successful in portraying the sheer madness and mayhem of those events.
0:08:43 > 0:08:45The opening sequence of the film
0:08:45 > 0:08:49where you have this fantastic sort of Dante's Inferno party
0:08:49 > 0:08:53with everyone dressed as demons and sometimes angels is fantastic
0:08:53 > 0:08:55and it's set in obviously a Park Lane apartment
0:08:55 > 0:08:58which existed before they were all pulled down indeed
0:08:58 > 0:09:00before the Second World War.
0:09:02 > 0:09:06You go through these red curtains into this amazing dance floor...
0:09:07 > 0:09:11and you do have people like Miles Malpractice,
0:09:11 > 0:09:14a character in Waugh's book who is based partly on Stephen Tennant,
0:09:14 > 0:09:16David Lennox who is based on Cecil Beaton.
0:09:16 > 0:09:21Miles Malpractice is snorting cocaine and kissing men with wolves heads,
0:09:21 > 0:09:24all sorts of strange things like this.
0:09:26 > 0:09:29One of the funniest things about the opening sequence
0:09:29 > 0:09:32is where you have Nina and Miles just dancing madly,
0:09:32 > 0:09:39you know, the Charleston on a cocaine high and there is madness going on all around them, mayhem.
0:09:40 > 0:09:43- Nina.- Miles.
0:09:43 > 0:09:46- Adam not back yet.- What?
0:09:46 > 0:09:47Adam? Not back yet?
0:09:47 > 0:09:49Any day now.
0:09:49 > 0:09:52- Isn't this too dull? - I've never been more bored.
0:09:52 > 0:09:58There was a definite way of talking, almost a kind of argot which the Bright Young People developed,
0:09:58 > 0:10:02all the kind of slang that Waugh puts into Vile Bodies -
0:10:02 > 0:10:04"My dear, how too-too drunk-making",
0:10:04 > 0:10:07"What a bogus man!", bogus meaning insincere or fake.
0:10:07 > 0:10:11How too dreary, they're like flies.
0:10:11 > 0:10:13I think they're after Agatha.
0:10:13 > 0:10:16Her father made the most crashing speech about customs officers
0:10:16 > 0:10:19in the House of Lords this evening - several bishops burst into tears!
0:10:19 > 0:10:22It's that man. I swear he tips them off. Where are we going?
0:10:22 > 0:10:28- Half-past three. How about the Ritz? - Oh, talk sense, dearest! Not while I'm dressed like this.
0:10:28 > 0:10:32The way they peppered their conversation
0:10:32 > 0:10:36with this extraordinary mixture of jazz slang
0:10:36 > 0:10:39with camp mannerisms, calling everyone da-a-arling
0:10:39 > 0:10:41or things divi-i-ine.
0:10:41 > 0:10:44Just over-emphasising everything.
0:10:44 > 0:10:48The characteristic Bright Young Person's mode of speech, very high pitched and drawling
0:10:48 > 0:10:52was developed simply so that it could be communicated above the noise
0:10:52 > 0:10:55of gramophone records, so you could talk while you were dancing
0:10:55 > 0:10:57to the noise of a wind up gramophone.
0:11:06 > 0:11:11This was a younger generation craving a culture of its own.
0:11:11 > 0:11:17Anything that represented the stoic patriotism and tradition of their parents was out.
0:11:19 > 0:11:21Everything exotic and modern was in.
0:11:23 > 0:11:26That included their taste in music
0:11:26 > 0:11:32so the wild, primitive sound of jazz was a Bright Young Thing obsession.
0:11:35 > 0:11:41These young people were clearly on a mission to enjoy themselves and to hell with everything else.
0:11:51 > 0:11:57This was the generation that had missed the war so on the one hand they felt guilty almost for not
0:11:57 > 0:12:04having been there and secondly they were sick to death of the war, the war
0:12:04 > 0:12:09and nothing but talk of the war and they didn't want anything to do with it. I think that was
0:12:09 > 0:12:16a large part of what was fuelling what - to the older generation - seemed outrageous behaviour.
0:12:16 > 0:12:19There was a kind of perverse wish on behalf of
0:12:19 > 0:12:24an awful lot of people to behave as irresponsibly and as childishly as they could,
0:12:24 > 0:12:30largely as a way of cocking a snook at the people who expected so much of them.
0:12:30 > 0:12:33I think there was a lot of that. A lot of deliberate copping out
0:12:33 > 0:12:37from the approved rules and regulations and career paths
0:12:37 > 0:12:40that one's parents perhaps wanted one to pursue.
0:12:40 > 0:12:45They are like the first teenagers in a way. This is the first time
0:12:45 > 0:12:48everything was expendable in a way.
0:12:48 > 0:12:51Life was expendable - that's what the First World War had taught them.
0:12:51 > 0:12:57It was actually carpe diem, live for the day, that was the whole thing. Just live for now!
0:12:58 > 0:13:03The roots of the scene can be traced to the early '20s and the activities
0:13:03 > 0:13:07of a few bored society women who began using central London
0:13:07 > 0:13:12as a playground for increasingly elaborate scavenger or treasure hunts.
0:13:12 > 0:13:17One of these girls who was very involved in these treasure hunts was asked how they started
0:13:17 > 0:13:22and she said, "On blank afternoons we used to chase each other around London and one girl
0:13:22 > 0:13:26"would have a head start of five minutes and then the others
0:13:26 > 0:13:29"would chase her on the tube and on the buses..."
0:13:29 > 0:13:33and you can imagine this group of kind of well-heeled, well-dressed young girls
0:13:33 > 0:13:36shrieking as they went on these new forms of public transportation
0:13:36 > 0:13:40which they wouldn't have travelled on in a normal situation.
0:13:40 > 0:13:46You know, they would only have gone anywhere in a taxi or in a private motor car.
0:13:46 > 0:13:52And this idea of mingling with the common people, for fun, was utterly new!
0:13:56 > 0:13:59With huge imagination and time on their hands,
0:13:59 > 0:14:04these treasure hunts grew in scale until swelled ranks of the well-to-do young
0:14:04 > 0:14:07took to their motor cars and chased after
0:14:07 > 0:14:11ever more extravagant artefacts via elaborately constructed clues.
0:14:13 > 0:14:16Because they were mostly born into the purple and well connected,
0:14:16 > 0:14:20these lists of items might include the Prime Ministers' pipe
0:14:20 > 0:14:23or a pair of stays worn by a West End actress.
0:14:23 > 0:14:25Some of these clues were extraordinary.
0:14:25 > 0:14:28Lord Beaverbrook even agreed to publish clues in his newspaper!
0:14:33 > 0:14:37They ended up in these mad-cap drunken charges
0:14:37 > 0:14:42through narrow streets in Soho and Chelsea.
0:14:42 > 0:14:46These cars being driven by these drunken fools.
0:14:46 > 0:14:51A lot of women as well - women being drunk in public at that point was completely outrageous.
0:14:55 > 0:14:59Although automobile production all but halted during the great war,
0:14:59 > 0:15:03developments in mass production techniques meant that
0:15:03 > 0:15:05the post-war era saw the motor car become
0:15:05 > 0:15:08ever more popular and faster.
0:15:08 > 0:15:13The Bright Young Things wouldn't have existed without the motor car - that's what gets them around.
0:15:13 > 0:15:14They are driving around drunk half the time.
0:15:14 > 0:15:20Waugh was always being prosecuted for driving the wrong way around a roundabout. These are toys to them!
0:15:20 > 0:15:23London is just a big adventure playground to them.
0:15:23 > 0:15:26You know, they are just let loose on this place!
0:15:27 > 0:15:30This was a phenomenon in search of a name.
0:15:30 > 0:15:35At the end of July 1924, the press gave it one.
0:15:35 > 0:15:42Readers of the Daily Mail woke up to this inflammatory report which said that there was...the headline went,
0:15:42 > 0:15:47"Chasing Clues: New Society Game", and then there was this banner headline that said...
0:15:52 > 0:15:54The 1920's saw a kind of mania for "brightness".
0:15:54 > 0:15:57In the immediate aftermath of the darkness of World War One
0:15:57 > 0:16:01the word "bright" signalled the right kind of optimistic exuberance.
0:16:01 > 0:16:05There were an awful lot of press campaigns, often for trivial things
0:16:05 > 0:16:11like Brighter Golf and there was a whole campaign for a Brighter London at one point
0:16:11 > 0:16:17in the 1920s, so the adjective "bright" was very much in the public consciousness at that time.
0:16:17 > 0:16:21So a young person who did something extraordinary or in some way outlandish
0:16:21 > 0:16:25wouldn't be surprised to be called a Bright Young Person in the context of the time.
0:16:25 > 0:16:30With a handy label attached, stories about this new generation's exciting
0:16:30 > 0:16:35but more and more outlandish behaviour both titillated and shocked the public.
0:16:35 > 0:16:41The rise of the Bright Young People coincided with a mini-revolution in the world of newspapers
0:16:41 > 0:16:45which they were exploited by, and able to exploit.
0:16:45 > 0:16:50Daily popular newspapers like the Daily Mail, The Express and The Sketch
0:16:50 > 0:16:52had been launched before the Great War,
0:16:52 > 0:16:56but it wasn't until the '20s that they really started to take off.
0:16:56 > 0:17:02Aimed at the burgeoning middle class and upper-lower class readers, their agenda and presentation
0:17:02 > 0:17:07shifted intentionally away from the austere and rather serious Victorian press.
0:17:07 > 0:17:11These popular papers were very different in content.
0:17:11 > 0:17:16They prized human interest above all. It was about personalities,
0:17:16 > 0:17:19celebrities, gossip scandal if it was there.
0:17:19 > 0:17:23It was also about features about personal life, domestic life.
0:17:23 > 0:17:27The private as well as the high political and the public.
0:17:27 > 0:17:32There was a conscious effort on the part of newspaper proprietors
0:17:32 > 0:17:35like Lord Northcliffe of the Mail and Beaverbrook,
0:17:35 > 0:17:37to go for what young people were up to.
0:17:37 > 0:17:42Flamboyant young people and their antics. They thought their readers would respond to this.
0:17:42 > 0:17:47The search for a cast of personalities that could
0:17:47 > 0:17:52populate the columns day in day out really led to the modern day gossip column
0:17:52 > 0:17:59and these Bright Young People were there to be photographed, there to be talked about day in, day out.
0:17:59 > 0:18:03Gossip wasn't entirely new to the newspapers and periodicals of the '20s
0:18:03 > 0:18:08but the people who were employed to gather and write it certainly were.
0:18:11 > 0:18:16The gossip writer of the pre-war period would probably have been
0:18:16 > 0:18:22a woman with a certain amount of journalistic experience who worked for a society lady.
0:18:22 > 0:18:25When that society lady was ill, she would have sent a note of this
0:18:25 > 0:18:28expressing general regret to the newspaper
0:18:28 > 0:18:33and when she was better, another note expressing general satisfaction would go to the newspaper.
0:18:33 > 0:18:35If she attended the Eton Harrow Cricket match,
0:18:35 > 0:18:38a photograph of her would be sent to...
0:18:38 > 0:18:44but the people doing the insinuating were not the social equals of the people being written about.
0:18:44 > 0:18:47Come the mid-1920s, when the newspapers woke up to the fact
0:18:47 > 0:18:51that there were readers to be gained from this society gossip,
0:18:51 > 0:18:55they employed people who actually went to the parties themselves.
0:18:56 > 0:19:02A bit of extra cash in exchange for insider tips and gossip would have been of little interest
0:19:02 > 0:19:05to the aristocracy before the Great War
0:19:05 > 0:19:09but tax rises in the '20s meant many were in no position to turn it down.
0:19:09 > 0:19:15One of the things that changes after the First World War is the position of the aristocracy is changing.
0:19:15 > 0:19:21It's declining. The value of agricultural land has declined, the burden of taxation has risen,
0:19:21 > 0:19:24the impact of the First World War in terms of deaths,
0:19:24 > 0:19:27the changing political climate, all puts pressure on the aristocracy,
0:19:27 > 0:19:29many of them are no longer as rich as they were before.
0:19:29 > 0:19:33By the end of the 1920s you see what was a very unusual phenomenon in the contexts of the time
0:19:33 > 0:19:39which is very well-educated and well-born young people becoming society columnists.
0:19:39 > 0:19:43These people were living beyond their means, they wanted to attend
0:19:43 > 0:19:48these parties and they couldn't afford their lifestyles unless they were subsidised by the papers.
0:19:48 > 0:19:52People like Patrick Balfour who was Mr Gossip on the Daily sketch -
0:19:52 > 0:19:55he is Evelyn Waugh's Mr Chatterbox in Vile Bodies,
0:19:55 > 0:19:58or Driberg who was the Dragoman on the Express.
0:19:58 > 0:20:01People such as that occupied positions of great power
0:20:01 > 0:20:09in terms of gossip columns and many a Bright Young Person affiliated to Balfour and Driberg made pin money
0:20:09 > 0:20:13by attending a grand party or a not-so-grand bohemian party
0:20:13 > 0:20:17and at about midnight, finding a telephone and phoning in details of it
0:20:17 > 0:20:19to whichever newspaper they had an entree into.
0:20:20 > 0:20:24The Press and the well-connected Bright Young People developed
0:20:24 > 0:20:28a cosy collusion in the '20s that delivered rewards on both sides.
0:20:29 > 0:20:31It hadn't been done like that before.
0:20:31 > 0:20:33There had been gossip and scandal
0:20:33 > 0:20:36but the people who'd reported had never actually been mixing
0:20:36 > 0:20:40with the people whose antics they were commenting on.
0:20:40 > 0:20:46By the mid 1920s, The Bright Young People's scavenger hunts had given way
0:20:46 > 0:20:47to stunt parties.
0:20:47 > 0:20:51These events were elaborately themed, fancy dress affairs
0:20:51 > 0:20:55that spun out of control and went on all night.
0:20:58 > 0:21:00The dressing up parties speak for themselves.
0:21:00 > 0:21:04Cowboy parties and circus parties and come as you were 20 years ago parties.
0:21:04 > 0:21:10You dress up as a famous character from history there was obviously a lot of cross dressing.
0:21:15 > 0:21:17Men dressed as women, women dressed as men.
0:21:19 > 0:21:22Lesbians dressed as admirals, that kind of thing.
0:21:23 > 0:21:25Men wore jewellery, make-up...
0:21:25 > 0:21:30There would be Greek parties, there was an urban Dionysia.
0:21:30 > 0:21:34I certainly know at one party that Lord Bath told me about,
0:21:34 > 0:21:37they danced across the counters of Selfridges.
0:21:40 > 0:21:44You have to see this in the context of what had gone before -
0:21:44 > 0:21:49these dreary Victorian receptions and even the Edwardian era,
0:21:49 > 0:21:52which was rather gayer, in the language of the time.
0:21:55 > 0:21:59Before the Great War, the round of Debutante Balls and official dinners
0:21:59 > 0:22:03that young Aristocrats would be subjected to as part of "the season"
0:22:03 > 0:22:08were very strictly controlled environments, constructed with the barely veiled aim
0:22:08 > 0:22:13of marrying off the participants as neatly as possible to their class counterparts.
0:22:13 > 0:22:16The First World War changed that completely.
0:22:16 > 0:22:22For the Bright Young Things, it's kind of a complete reinvention of the way one might hold a party.
0:22:22 > 0:22:24The notion of the Bring a Bottle party
0:22:24 > 0:22:26was invented by the Bright Young Things
0:22:26 > 0:22:29and it was partly because many of them were actually hard up,
0:22:29 > 0:22:33or the other key thing was that a lot of them came from Oxford
0:22:33 > 0:22:36and Cambridge where they weren't allowed to go to pubs.
0:22:36 > 0:22:41They had bring a bottle parties so this was sort of a university thing.
0:22:45 > 0:22:48With each week, a new party theme emerged.
0:22:48 > 0:22:51David Tennant, who was Stephen Tennant's brother,
0:22:51 > 0:22:55had a very famous party where everyone dressed up as characters
0:22:55 > 0:23:01from Mozart and there are extraordinary photographs of them all in 18th century wigs
0:23:01 > 0:23:03and breeches in the middle of the street
0:23:03 > 0:23:06with a workman's steam hammer.
0:23:06 > 0:23:09The Bright Young People became increasingly aware there was
0:23:09 > 0:23:11an audience for their provocative behaviour.
0:23:11 > 0:23:18The party elite understood the power of stunt photo opportunities and appearances in the gossip columns.
0:23:18 > 0:23:21Their fame, or infamy, was growing.
0:23:21 > 0:23:25Because they knew the press, they had reporters at their beck and call,
0:23:25 > 0:23:32because some Bright Young People were reporters, quite small parties containing only a few people
0:23:32 > 0:23:37in out of the way places, could be reported in newspapers as if the whole of fashionable London
0:23:37 > 0:23:39had gone to them or wanted to be there.
0:23:39 > 0:23:43This incestuous relationship with the nation's popular press allowed
0:23:43 > 0:23:47the Bright Young set to control their own mystique and legend.
0:23:47 > 0:23:53People in Bradford and Solihull did know who Stephen Tennant was,
0:23:53 > 0:23:55they knew what the Bright Young Things were.
0:23:55 > 0:23:58They might have taken the Mickey out of them but they also
0:23:58 > 0:24:01gave them a laugh in a way and I think people like Stephen
0:24:01 > 0:24:04would have been quite amused by that as well.
0:24:04 > 0:24:06Hedonism and glamour ruled like never before
0:24:06 > 0:24:11and the Bright Young People's happenings became increasingly provocative.
0:24:13 > 0:24:20One party, which to us seems almost sick in a way, 1927, everyone had to come dressed as a beggar.
0:24:20 > 0:24:25This is a year after the General Strike. I mean, how offensive is that?!
0:24:25 > 0:24:28Of course, there are these descriptions of Stephen Tennant
0:24:28 > 0:24:30dressed in wonderful rags, showing bit of leg...
0:24:30 > 0:24:32it's kind of... You know?
0:24:41 > 0:24:44Then it started getting utterly ridiculous.
0:24:44 > 0:24:47People came dressed as babies, drinking alcohol out of bottles.
0:24:54 > 0:24:57There was a famous party given by a woman
0:24:57 > 0:24:59called Rosemary Saunders where they turned up in baby carriages.
0:24:59 > 0:25:03One girl came driven in a pram by her mother wearing a full Victorian
0:25:03 > 0:25:07children's outfit and the mother was dressed in her Victorian clothes.
0:25:07 > 0:25:10Commentators of the time, in the mid 1920s, were very quick
0:25:10 > 0:25:16to comment on the childishness of it all, the infantilism almost.
0:25:16 > 0:25:19They really wanted to stay in the nursery I think,
0:25:19 > 0:25:22and therefore what everything was geared towards
0:25:22 > 0:25:28was having very childish, nursery behaviour continuing but in a grown up way,
0:25:28 > 0:25:33in other words, with a lot of drink, in some cases a lot of drugs
0:25:33 > 0:25:36and some very, very glamorous locations.
0:25:45 > 0:25:49Though the elder generation were publicly disapproving,
0:25:49 > 0:25:54privately they were prepared to indulge the new generation's naughtiness
0:25:54 > 0:25:58and were even intrigued by its excesses.
0:25:58 > 0:26:00"What I always wonder, Kitty dear,
0:26:00 > 0:26:04"is what they actually do at these parties of theirs.
0:26:04 > 0:26:05"I mean do they. . . ?"
0:26:05 > 0:26:09"My dear, from all I hear, I think they do."
0:26:09 > 0:26:15"Oh, to be young again, Kitty. When I think, my dear, of all the trouble
0:26:15 > 0:26:19"and exertion which we had to go through to be even moderately bad."
0:26:19 > 0:26:22Indeed the Bright Young People were up to all sorts.
0:26:22 > 0:26:26Every exploit had to be more outrageous than the next.
0:26:26 > 0:26:31Many of them involved expeditions down to Limehouse to score their cocaine.
0:26:31 > 0:26:37There were harder drugs around to which several Bright Young People did ultimately become hooked.
0:26:37 > 0:26:40Hashish, which was then known as Indian hemp,
0:26:40 > 0:26:45was certainly smoked at some of these gatherings and licentious behaviour there certainly was.
0:26:45 > 0:26:49A lot of these people were either addicted to cocaine, to heroin,
0:26:49 > 0:26:52they're drinking all the time.
0:26:52 > 0:26:57When you read Evelyn Waugh's accounts of life in Oxford, he was drunk all the time, all the time.
0:27:17 > 0:27:22Not everyone was attracted to the scene purely because of these excesses.
0:27:22 > 0:27:27In 1926, one aspiring photographer with one eye on advancing his career
0:27:27 > 0:27:31was desperate to muscle in on some of the Bright Young Thing action.
0:27:31 > 0:27:34Wow! So this is Sotheby's collection
0:27:34 > 0:27:40of Cecil Beaton's prints, in fact his whole collection. It's extraordinary.
0:27:40 > 0:27:47These are the actual filing cabinets that Beaton gave the collection to Sotheby's in.
0:27:47 > 0:27:51Sold it and there are some unbelievable photographs
0:27:51 > 0:27:56of the young and very exquisite photographer
0:27:56 > 0:27:58at the very beginning of his career.
0:27:58 > 0:28:02I mean this is a man who really created the Bright Young Things,
0:28:02 > 0:28:06who created the image of them, and it is through Beaton's lens
0:28:06 > 0:28:09that their beauty was memorialised.
0:28:09 > 0:28:15But you can see Beaton himself was the most extraordinary looking character.
0:28:16 > 0:28:23He was a very ordinary middleclass boy but he created himself into this exquisite figure.
0:28:30 > 0:28:35Like Waugh, spare time and a limitless supply of money were not available to the young Cecil Beaton.
0:28:35 > 0:28:40If he was to party in the higher echelons of society, he would have to make it pay.
0:28:42 > 0:28:45If we talk about the Bright Young People
0:28:45 > 0:28:48as occupying a sort of social mixture of classes
0:28:48 > 0:28:51so that you've got the younger sons of aristocrats,
0:28:51 > 0:28:54you've got daughters of aristocrats who want to do something fun
0:28:54 > 0:28:59before they get married, or have a career themselves, you've also got these kind of
0:28:59 > 0:29:04middle class boys in particular, who are hoping to make their career out of being a part of this group.
0:29:04 > 0:29:07He wasn't a conventional Bright Young Person.
0:29:07 > 0:29:10His father was a merchant, he'd been to Cambridge, which may not sound
0:29:10 > 0:29:15like a disadvantage but was compared to the sons of noblemen who had been to Eton and Oxford.
0:29:15 > 0:29:18He felt he was being discriminated against socially,
0:29:18 > 0:29:22being looked down upon and was belittled because of his origins.
0:29:24 > 0:29:29Although on the surface he became every inch the Bright Young Person,
0:29:29 > 0:29:35behind the facade his decidedly middle-class entrepreneurial instinct and ambition
0:29:35 > 0:29:37were working overtime.
0:29:40 > 0:29:44His diaries are almost naked in their cynicism, in their interest
0:29:44 > 0:29:48in what he calls the uprise, meaning his own uprise and his career path.
0:29:48 > 0:29:55One can see the extraordinary lengths he was prepared to go to insert himself into high society.
0:29:55 > 0:30:00Brilliantly, Cecil Beaton used to send photographs he'd taken of his sisters to Tatler Magazine,
0:30:00 > 0:30:05pretending they'd been sent in by somebody else in order to promote his own name at Tatler.
0:30:05 > 0:30:10That's how he got his first job, he went from Tatler to Vogue to Vanity Fair. Mission accomplished.
0:30:12 > 0:30:18Beaton presented nothing as tiresome as reality, but instead an idealised fantasy.
0:30:18 > 0:30:24This concoction was irresistible to both the image obsessed Bright Young Person, and to those vicariously
0:30:24 > 0:30:28enjoying the lifestyle through the magazines who published his work.
0:30:30 > 0:30:34His lens was very flattering. He was a great one with the airbrush, or the airbrush of his day.
0:30:34 > 0:30:35He was a great re-toucher.
0:30:59 > 0:31:06This is a man who had the eye, but he was also part of the action, he was part of that society.
0:31:06 > 0:31:10Really, Beaton helped define the Bright Young Things.
0:31:10 > 0:31:16These people were really geniuses in terms of image and creating image and scene setting.
0:31:18 > 0:31:22In the same way as when we look at Gainsborough portraits we can get an
0:31:22 > 0:31:25idea of what the 18th-century aristocracy wanted, how they
0:31:25 > 0:31:32wanted to project themselves, we get exactly the same thing from Cecil Beaton's photographs of the 1920s.
0:31:32 > 0:31:36The immediacy of photography meant that, more than ever, the notion of
0:31:36 > 0:31:43image and how one was seen became something to be played with and exploited.
0:31:43 > 0:31:47The way they look at the camera, there is an incredibly knowing glance there.
0:31:47 > 0:31:52There is a complicity, there's a contract, really, with the man
0:31:52 > 0:31:56who's photographing them, with the people who are going to look at them.
0:31:56 > 0:32:02"You want to see me, I am some example of your dreams.
0:32:02 > 0:32:05"I live beyond your ordinary, boring life.
0:32:05 > 0:32:10"I don't exist in your world, but here's a little bit of me that I'm sharing with you."
0:32:10 > 0:32:17And it is really that, and it's a piece of alchemy in a way, but it is also
0:32:17 > 0:32:23a Devil's contract because we know the price of that, for them, is also
0:32:23 > 0:32:25very often, oblivion.
0:32:25 > 0:32:30Poster boys and girls for little more than an attitude, the Bright Young Things found themselves
0:32:30 > 0:32:35being used as both clarion call and warning sign for modern appetites.
0:32:35 > 0:32:41They encapsulated an aspirational, glamorous and dangerous existence.
0:32:41 > 0:32:47It's the first time the notion of a lifestyle is evolved, in a way,
0:32:47 > 0:32:52so the commercial power of that is very important.
0:32:52 > 0:32:54The Bright Young Things, in a way,
0:32:54 > 0:32:58are almost there to sell clothes and perfume.
0:32:58 > 0:33:01They might not be advertising them - although many of them did -
0:33:01 > 0:33:05but that becomes the start of that new kind of society.
0:33:05 > 0:33:10That's really an important part of what they represented.
0:33:13 > 0:33:18Despite the commercial appropriation of the Bright Young brand, the everyday activity of the
0:33:18 > 0:33:24party set continued, with a wit and a knowing kind of irony that emphasised its exclusivity.
0:33:24 > 0:33:29Events like the impersonation party of 1927
0:33:29 > 0:33:33were seized upon as opportunities to revel in their own notoriety.
0:33:33 > 0:33:37You were invited to come to a house in Mayfair dressed as somebody else,
0:33:37 > 0:33:40and it was a mark of their reflexiveness, and the rather
0:33:40 > 0:33:45incestuous quality of the movement that several Bright Young People came as other Bright Young People.
0:33:45 > 0:33:48They were that celebrated, even then.
0:33:48 > 0:33:51Tom Driberg, the society columnist, he was the Dragoman as he was known
0:33:51 > 0:33:56on the Daily Express, arranged his hair so that he looked like Brian Howard.
0:33:56 > 0:34:00But other people came in more respectable guises.
0:34:00 > 0:34:04Stephen Tennant famously appeared as Queen Marie of Romania,
0:34:04 > 0:34:08possibly looking more feminine and regal than the lady did herself.
0:34:10 > 0:34:15The actress Tallulah Bankhead came as Jean Borotra, the tennis player.
0:34:16 > 0:34:20That made an extraordinary stir, the impersonation party.
0:34:20 > 0:34:27Look at this, Noel Coward, Marlene Dietrich, John Gielgud. They're all here.
0:34:27 > 0:34:30But I'm looking for someone in particular...
0:34:30 > 0:34:32Ah! Gosh. Stephen Tennant.
0:34:32 > 0:34:34A whole file.
0:34:34 > 0:34:36God, this is so exciting.
0:34:36 > 0:34:41When the sun set on Bright Young heyday in the 1930s, Stephen Tennant
0:34:41 > 0:34:46retreated from the world and lived the life of an eccentric recluse in his Wiltshire home.
0:34:46 > 0:34:52Although he outlived most of his Bright Young contemporaries, when he died in 1988,
0:34:52 > 0:34:56his place in the Bright Young era had been all but forgotten.
0:34:56 > 0:34:59These are archive prints from Wilsford,
0:34:59 > 0:35:05the house Stephen lived in, where I actually visited him in 1986.
0:35:05 > 0:35:10This is a man who really defined the 1920s, as far as I'm concerned.
0:35:12 > 0:35:18Born in 1906, Stephen Tennant was the youngest son of the Earl Of Glenconnor.
0:35:18 > 0:35:24He was a precocious, artistic child, indulged by his mother and babied by his nanny.
0:35:24 > 0:35:26This is what he grew up to be.
0:35:26 > 0:35:34Probably the most androgynous, the most extraordinary man of his generation.
0:35:34 > 0:35:36I mean, I say "man",
0:35:36 > 0:35:40I know the sculptor Jacob Epstein said that Stephen was the most
0:35:40 > 0:35:44beautiful creature, male or female, he had ever seen in his life.
0:35:47 > 0:35:50Independently wealthy, with an eternally childlike passion for
0:35:50 > 0:35:56only beauty and pleasure, Stephen was the absolute Bright Young Man.
0:35:56 > 0:35:59Not in the least concerned about the fuss his clothing and make-up
0:35:59 > 0:36:04caused, Stephen Tennant, in a very modern way, was his own work of art.
0:36:04 > 0:36:08And if that attracted attention, so be it.
0:36:10 > 0:36:13Stephen has gold dust in his hair,
0:36:13 > 0:36:17he has Vaseline on his eyelids and he has lipstick.
0:36:17 > 0:36:23But the effect is not effeminate, it's just an otherworldly image.
0:36:23 > 0:36:27It could be from Andy Warhol's Factory in the 60s.
0:36:27 > 0:36:35It's so modern, I think, and I know Caroline Blackwood, who was Lucien Freud's wife, said Stephen was the
0:36:35 > 0:36:39nearest thing to David Bowie they had in those days, really, and there
0:36:39 > 0:36:44is a degree of that glam rock allure about him, the sheen.
0:36:44 > 0:36:48Indeed, the whole of his bedroom was papered in silver foil.
0:36:48 > 0:36:52It really is like some '60s acid casualty, in a way.
0:36:52 > 0:36:56But the thing about Stephen was he was this extraordinary, artificial creation,
0:36:56 > 0:37:00and that is what is most exciting about this box,
0:37:00 > 0:37:06is that it contains all we have of him now. That's all that's left,
0:37:06 > 0:37:07in this box.
0:37:07 > 0:37:09# Rebel, rebel
0:37:09 > 0:37:11# How could they know?
0:37:11 > 0:37:15# Hot tramp, I love you so. #
0:37:15 > 0:37:20Although he was a proficient sketcher, painter and enthusiastic writer, other than the photographs
0:37:20 > 0:37:26that Cecil Beaton took of him, Stephen Tennant would leave no tangible personal legacy.
0:37:26 > 0:37:32His art was an ephemeral performance that, to his creative friends like Beaton and the young Nancy Mitford,
0:37:32 > 0:37:35offered the most magnificent inspiration.
0:37:35 > 0:37:43Nancy modelled Cedric in The Pursuit Of Love and Love In A Cold Climate very much on Stephen Tennant.
0:37:43 > 0:37:49His beauty and his extraordinary affectations and the coat,
0:37:49 > 0:37:55the dark blue coat with the red piping that so enrages her father
0:37:55 > 0:38:03in the novel, in fact, was all taken from life and all comes from Stephen Tenant.
0:38:03 > 0:38:09He was the kind of ne plus ultra of the outrageous,
0:38:09 > 0:38:14beautiful, gay young man, and Nancy couldn't get enough of it.
0:38:14 > 0:38:18A glitter of blue and gold crossed the parquet and a
0:38:18 > 0:38:21human dragonfly was kneeling on the fur rug in front of the Montdores,
0:38:21 > 0:38:25one long white hand extended towards each.
0:38:25 > 0:38:31He was a tall, thin young man, supple as a girl, dressed in rather a bright blue suit;
0:38:31 > 0:38:35his hair was the gold of a brass bed-knob, and his insect appearance
0:38:35 > 0:38:38came from the fact that the upper part of his face was concealed
0:38:38 > 0:38:43by blue goggles set in gold rims quite an inch thick.
0:38:43 > 0:38:49A man to look the way Stephen did in 1927 was a kind of gesture against
0:38:49 > 0:38:53everything that had gone before.
0:38:53 > 0:38:56It was a gesture against patriarchal society.
0:38:56 > 0:39:01It was a gesture against all the kind of values that caused the First World War.
0:39:01 > 0:39:07For someone to actually look like that now was really sort of two fingers against the world.
0:39:18 > 0:39:23In an era with very strict dress codes, the Bright Young Things pushed the sartorial boundaries
0:39:23 > 0:39:24to breaking point.
0:39:24 > 0:39:28For a decade, it was hemlines at dawn.
0:39:28 > 0:39:35Shiny, transparent, short, androgynous and louche, if it broke the rules, they wore it.
0:39:35 > 0:39:39A Bright Young Person did their best, I think,
0:39:39 > 0:39:45to shock their parents, which, when it came to the girls, meant short skirts, a lot of make-up,
0:39:45 > 0:39:51shingled hair, all the things that your parents would have raised their eyes to the ceiling in horror.
0:39:51 > 0:39:58At the heart of the Bright Young party set, costume became a competitive obsession.
0:39:58 > 0:40:02Presented with only the most blase of attitudes, attention to detail,
0:40:02 > 0:40:07wit, and, of course, excess, were what was most prized in an outfit.
0:40:07 > 0:40:14So preparations for an evening out for someone like Stephen Tennant would be, you'd be talking a week
0:40:14 > 0:40:16of preparations for a particular evening out.
0:40:16 > 0:40:24The costume fittings, this was like an 18th-century courtesan.
0:40:24 > 0:40:30So there would be costume fittings, then there would be a series of phone calls between friends
0:40:30 > 0:40:35agreeing what you are going to wear, and the great thing that Stephen would always take the Michael out of
0:40:35 > 0:40:41Cecil Beaton was that Cecil would say, "I'm not going to dress up. I'm just going to rummage around."
0:40:41 > 0:40:47And then of course he would arrive, a sort of Marie Antoinette in full wig and gown and everything.
0:40:47 > 0:40:50He'd spent weeks getting this costume together.
0:41:01 > 0:41:05It was fun for the Bright Young aristocrats and hangers-on to race
0:41:05 > 0:41:09around partying in the capital, but the need for ever-more extravagant
0:41:09 > 0:41:15ways to fill their spare time saw them hit the road for more exclusive adventures.
0:41:15 > 0:41:18This notion that you decamp to someone's stately pile
0:41:18 > 0:41:25for a weekend was key, and of course the fact that they all had motorcars to drive there was part of the fun.
0:41:27 > 0:41:31For Cecil Beaton, it was being invited to Stephen Tennant's house, Wilsford Manor, just outside
0:41:31 > 0:41:38Salisbury, was really one of the moments he felt himself being taken into the society.
0:41:40 > 0:41:47For Cecil to arrive in his leopard-skin pyjamas, lay them out on the bed, just amazed at
0:41:47 > 0:41:54being in this 12 bedroom house, and the fact that you would have a footman laying out your underwear.
0:41:54 > 0:41:59He'd had to go and buy new sets of underwear from Selfridges the day before.
0:41:59 > 0:42:04He puts on his dressing gown and just feels he is completely part of it.
0:42:04 > 0:42:10And it is one big choreographed performance.
0:42:10 > 0:42:15I kind of feel sorry for the guests at Wilsford because they were all dragooned by Stephen into
0:42:15 > 0:42:18fancy dress for the whole weekend,
0:42:18 > 0:42:24and probably the most famous image, really, of the Bright Young Things
0:42:24 > 0:42:31is this image from Wilsford Manor, taken by Cecil Beaton of Stephen's fete champetre, which was this
0:42:31 > 0:42:39recreation of an 18th-century watercolour on a bridge over the River Avon at the end of the garden,
0:42:39 > 0:42:46and you have these people, you have Rex Whistler, Cecil Beaton himself, Georgia Sitwell, William Walton,
0:42:46 > 0:42:52the famous composer here wearing full make-up, Stephen Tennant, of course, and the Jungman sisters.
0:42:52 > 0:42:59This is theatre. And, in this respect, it's theatre for a private audience.
0:42:59 > 0:43:03This is the real heart of Bright Young Thing society,
0:43:03 > 0:43:07where there isn't even an audience.
0:43:07 > 0:43:09They're doing it for themselves.
0:43:09 > 0:43:17They all look like immensely stylised morris dancers, but worse than that, sort of harlequinade.
0:43:17 > 0:43:21In fact, the whole scene was observed by Lytton Strachey, who happened to
0:43:21 > 0:43:28be calling at the time and saw this extraordinary tableaux enacted in front of him, and was just
0:43:28 > 0:43:33incredulous and said, "extraordinary people with a few feathers where brains should be",
0:43:33 > 0:43:37which is an over-simplification, because some of the Bright Young People were immensely
0:43:37 > 0:43:40astute and immensely clever, but they invited you not to
0:43:40 > 0:43:44take them seriously, and a lot of people consequently didn't take them seriously.
0:43:44 > 0:43:47But of course, Lychton Strachey brings
0:43:47 > 0:43:52Siegfreid Sassoon, the great war poet, who falls in love with Stephen.
0:43:52 > 0:43:59It's the great Bright Young Thing romance - doomed to failure, of course,
0:43:59 > 0:44:01but it's the great gossip of the day.
0:44:01 > 0:44:08In the 1920s, even though homosexuality was illegal and punished severely,
0:44:08 > 0:44:13within the confines of the Bright Young society, gay and lesbian affairs were accepted.
0:44:13 > 0:44:17Using fancy dress as an excuse to wear make-up and cross dress,
0:44:17 > 0:44:22Stephen Tennant was by no means alone in his obvious homosexuality.
0:44:22 > 0:44:26The Bright Young set was awash with similar gay young dandies.
0:44:26 > 0:44:30That notion of homosexuality as being
0:44:30 > 0:44:34accepted is really key to that period.
0:44:34 > 0:44:38It's what binds a lot of these people together.
0:44:38 > 0:44:43There is a lot of lesbianism as well, because of course the first "lesbian" book,
0:44:43 > 0:44:47The Well Of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, is published around this time.
0:44:47 > 0:44:54It's the first time these conditions, as people regard them, had been given names.
0:44:54 > 0:45:01No longer are their sexualities or their otherness means of weakness or of attack,
0:45:01 > 0:45:03they're means of strength.
0:45:03 > 0:45:07The gay figures in Brideshead Revisited, people like Anthony Blanche,
0:45:07 > 0:45:10who's based on Harold Acton and Brian Howard,
0:45:10 > 0:45:14these are people who were not
0:45:14 > 0:45:17effete, really. They were kind of
0:45:17 > 0:45:21out about it, very pugnacious about it.
0:45:21 > 0:45:25About six of them came into my room,
0:45:25 > 0:45:26the rest stood mouthing outside.
0:45:26 > 0:45:29My dear, they looked too extraordinary.
0:45:29 > 0:45:33They had been having one of their ridiculous club dinners and were all wearing coloured tail-coats -
0:45:33 > 0:45:35a sort of livery. "My dears,"
0:45:35 > 0:45:39I said to them, "you look like a lot of most disorderly footmen."
0:45:39 > 0:45:45Then one of them, rather a juicy little piece, accused me of unnatural vices.
0:45:45 > 0:45:50"My dear, " I said, "I may be inverted but I am not insatiable.
0:45:50 > 0:45:53"Come back when you are alone."
0:45:53 > 0:45:55They were modern figures.
0:45:55 > 0:45:57This is the way they saw the world going.
0:45:57 > 0:46:00This was a way of modern life.
0:46:03 > 0:46:07Within the Bright Young coterie, aristocratic women were also freed from the era's
0:46:07 > 0:46:14most genteel expectations, and for better or worse, smoked, drank and took centre stage.
0:46:16 > 0:46:19Evelyn Waugh was so impressed and fascinated by one of these wild,
0:46:19 > 0:46:27irresponsible modern women, that he immortalised her as a lead character in his satirical novel Vile Bodies.
0:46:27 > 0:46:33One of the scenes in Bright Young Things, which is an adaptation of Vile Bodies, has Agatha Runcible,
0:46:33 > 0:46:38the anti-heroine, we could call her, who's based on somebody called Elizabeth Ponsonby.
0:46:38 > 0:46:43She is caught and searched by customs officers at Dover
0:46:43 > 0:46:47as the ship lands at the start of the film.
0:46:47 > 0:46:50- Adam, darling.- Hello, Agatha.
0:46:50 > 0:46:54I never saw you on the boat. I can't tell you the things that have been happening to me.
0:46:54 > 0:46:57The way they looked... Too, too shaming.
0:46:57 > 0:47:00Positively surgical, my dear. And such wicked old women.
0:47:00 > 0:47:03I should ring up every cabinet minister
0:47:03 > 0:47:07- and give them the most shy-making details.- I've got troubles of my own.
0:47:07 > 0:47:11She utterly ignores her friend's predicament.
0:47:11 > 0:47:17He's actually in real trouble, he's had a book, on which his future depends, confiscated.
0:47:17 > 0:47:21All she is interested in is the party that they're going to
0:47:21 > 0:47:22go to in London that night.
0:47:22 > 0:47:25So she is utterly unaffected by how ridiculous she looks.
0:47:25 > 0:47:29It's going to be a lovely party tonight, so we simply must catch the
0:47:29 > 0:47:32- next train or I shan't have a chance to dress.- Who?
0:47:33 > 0:47:38Oh, you poor things. Have you been waiting here all this time?
0:47:42 > 0:47:48Elizabeth Ponsonby, like her fictional rendering, Agatha Runcible,
0:47:48 > 0:47:53was a magnet for the press. Her passion for partying, coupled with having an aristocratic
0:47:53 > 0:47:59politician for a father, made her a prime target for photo opportunities and gossip stories.
0:48:01 > 0:48:08But the truth was that Elizabeth Ponsonby couldn't really afford the extravagant life she chose to lead.
0:48:08 > 0:48:13Her father's home, Shulbrede Priory in Surrey, was the destination for
0:48:13 > 0:48:19the odd Bright Young weekend and is still the Ponsonby family residence.
0:48:21 > 0:48:26We are extraordinarily lucky, because her family preserved almost everything - diaries, letters,
0:48:26 > 0:48:33photographs, stage pictures and playbills, the marks of Elizabeth's early fascination with theatre.
0:48:33 > 0:48:37Her family belonged to a rather obscure quadrant of English
0:48:37 > 0:48:42social life these days, who I can only describe as the aristocratic poor.
0:48:42 > 0:48:46By using every penny of her allowance, the coppers she could
0:48:46 > 0:48:50make from pawning her possessions, and amassing enormous debts,
0:48:50 > 0:48:58Elizabeth achieved legendary status as the '20s It girl without whom a party just wasn't a party.
0:48:58 > 0:48:59And here
0:48:59 > 0:49:01is the
0:49:01 > 0:49:05poem that John Betjeman wrote for his friend Patrick Balfour on his
0:49:05 > 0:49:1070th birthday, where he reminisces about that whole late 1920s scene.
0:49:10 > 0:49:14It goes, I hear the clink of glasses in my memory's ear
0:49:14 > 0:49:16A spurt of soda as the whiskey rose
0:49:16 > 0:49:18Bringing its heady scent to memory's nose
0:49:18 > 0:49:21Along with smells one otherwise forgets
0:49:21 > 0:49:24Hairwash from Delhez, Turkish cigarettes
0:49:24 > 0:49:26The reek of Ronuk on a parquet floor
0:49:26 > 0:49:28As parties came cascading through the door
0:49:28 > 0:49:31Elizabeth Ponsonby in leopard-skins...
0:49:35 > 0:49:39Without any particular intellectual ability or talent, there wasn't a great deal
0:49:39 > 0:49:43a young woman like Elizabeth Ponsonby could do in the 1920s.
0:49:43 > 0:49:46So she made the best of what she knew she was good at,
0:49:46 > 0:49:52and that was throwing parties, and drawing attention to herself wherever she went.
0:49:52 > 0:49:56This was an age in which everyone colluded with the media,
0:49:56 > 0:50:01and the Bright Young Person was really judged by the weight of their press cuttings and photographs.
0:50:01 > 0:50:06What we have here is an album that Elizabeth kept herself.
0:50:06 > 0:50:08It's a chronicle of the life she lived in the
0:50:08 > 0:50:15late 1920s, the people she lived it with, the celebrities that she came across,
0:50:15 > 0:50:17and in each photograph this
0:50:17 > 0:50:23pale and sometimes not terribly happy-looking woman stares forth.
0:50:26 > 0:50:30You can see in the Bright Young People and their relationships with the media,
0:50:30 > 0:50:33you can see the beginnings of modern celebrity culture.
0:50:33 > 0:50:37You can see the beginnings of people being famous for being famous.
0:50:37 > 0:50:43Someone like Elizabeth Ponsonby, for example, did nothing except turn up in society columns.
0:50:43 > 0:50:46She would be involved in one outrageous stunt after another,
0:50:46 > 0:50:51and people would be able to track her career through the press by means of this.
0:50:51 > 0:50:55Where Elizabeth Ponsonby was a hapless but gifted amateur
0:50:55 > 0:51:01in the game of self-publicity, other Bright Young People took to it like professionals.
0:51:01 > 0:51:06The most famous one of all, whose celebrity was as such that eventually it went all the way down into the
0:51:06 > 0:51:12tabloid newspapers like the News Of The World and The Star and papers like that, was Brenda Dean Paul,
0:51:12 > 0:51:18known as the society drug addict, who spent years in and out of prison, in and out of rehab,
0:51:18 > 0:51:26and whose career was monitored by the press in much the same way that Katie Price and Peter Andre are now.
0:51:26 > 0:51:30Whatever she did, there would be a newspaper headline to match.
0:51:39 > 0:51:45Always more Hollywood wild child than Mayfair deb, the Baronet's daughter turned wannabe actress
0:51:45 > 0:51:51had swung it in nightclubs of Weimar Berlin and lounged in the fleshpots of permissive Paris,
0:51:51 > 0:51:54where she infamously first got acquainted with heroin.
0:51:58 > 0:52:05People like Brenda Dean Paul were great users of the media of their time.
0:52:05 > 0:52:09She would write journalism when she needed money, basically for drugs.
0:52:09 > 0:52:13She threw her suitcases down the stairs once at some reporters who were harassing her,
0:52:13 > 0:52:17but a fortnight later she would be hard up and write a series of articles
0:52:17 > 0:52:20about her holiday in Tahiti, and the whole thing would go on again.
0:52:25 > 0:52:31She had the story of her life ghosted, My First Life, which was published, and she came back almost
0:52:31 > 0:52:36to promote it, she had this amazing drug collapse at the airport when she was coming back from Paris.
0:52:36 > 0:52:41She was sort of picked up off the floor, and it's a kind of publicity stunt.
0:52:41 > 0:52:46Like modern celebrities who complain about being harassed and badgered by the press, but at the
0:52:46 > 0:52:53same time are setting up incidents in which they know the press will be able to help them to their advantage.
0:52:53 > 0:52:58This Faustian pact struck with the press in the 1920s clearly could not last.
0:52:58 > 0:53:03As the new decade dawned, onlookers found less to be entertained by
0:53:03 > 0:53:06and more to criticise about the antics of the Bright Young People.
0:53:06 > 0:53:10Even within the scene itself, the anticipation of a massive
0:53:10 > 0:53:13collective hangover was beginning to take hold.
0:53:15 > 0:53:19I think certainly there was a feeling that...
0:53:19 > 0:53:23this was the party at the end of the world, and everything
0:53:23 > 0:53:27was going to change, and going to change not in a nice way.
0:53:27 > 0:53:31The champagne corks were always bobbing away on a stream that
0:53:31 > 0:53:35was leading somewhere not terribly pleasant.
0:53:39 > 0:53:44In the autumn of 1931, the ill-timed Red and White Ball
0:53:44 > 0:53:50was the lavish Bright Young party that for the press - and public - was a party too far.
0:53:50 > 0:53:55You came dressed in red or white, you ate things like strawberries or
0:53:55 > 0:54:01red-coloured cocktails, you smoked white cigarettes, you ate white chicken,
0:54:01 > 0:54:07and it went on all night. I think Brenda Dean Paul was arrested for trying to pull some woman's hair out.
0:54:07 > 0:54:13I think there may have been a drugs bust, and this was the party, the symbolic party, after which
0:54:13 > 0:54:18even the society magazines turned on the Bright Young People because reports of this coincided with
0:54:18 > 0:54:22a march of unemployed workers from the North down to London.
0:54:26 > 0:54:31The party decade of consumption and boom was being symbolically paid for
0:54:31 > 0:54:34by industrial unrest and fiscal uncertainty.
0:54:34 > 0:54:38Across Europe, economies and governments were collapsing,
0:54:38 > 0:54:41with the extremes of fascism and communism taking hold.
0:54:41 > 0:54:45The thought of a rarefied few kicking up their heels and ignoring
0:54:45 > 0:54:49the sober realities of the day had grown increasingly repulsive.
0:54:49 > 0:54:53Even The Bystander said, "You cannot go on behaving
0:54:53 > 0:54:58"like this when starving men are coming south from distressed areas to petition their MPs."
0:54:58 > 0:55:01And that was more or less the winding up
0:55:01 > 0:55:04of the pleasure-seeking last six or seven years.
0:55:04 > 0:55:08The main players are no longer major players. They're bored.
0:55:08 > 0:55:12Also, society as a whole is bored of what the Bright Young People had got up to.
0:55:12 > 0:55:16They're much more interested in international politics at the time,
0:55:16 > 0:55:21with the spectre of German power reviving.
0:55:21 > 0:55:24They're more interested in rebuilding the British economy.
0:55:24 > 0:55:26It's a different world in the 1930s,
0:55:26 > 0:55:30and the Bright Young People just don't fit into it any more.
0:55:30 > 0:55:34The Bright Young chroniclers were the first to spot the decaying of the movement,
0:55:34 > 0:55:36and ultimately, they were the survivors.
0:55:36 > 0:55:40Waugh's novel Vile Bodies, written in 1929, had predicted dire
0:55:40 > 0:55:44consequences for the pursuit of the lifestyle he'd been so attracted to.
0:55:44 > 0:55:47As soon as Vile Bodies had been published, he abandoned
0:55:47 > 0:55:52this milieu and went off travelling around the world, was received into the Roman Catholic Church
0:55:52 > 0:55:57and effectively abandons the social scene of which he'd very sparingly been an ornament.
0:56:00 > 0:56:03Like Waugh, Cecil Beaton moved on.
0:56:03 > 0:56:08Selling his highly glamorous vision of the Bright Young lifestyle to an international audience,
0:56:08 > 0:56:13he established himself as one of the 20th century's most innovative photographers and designers.
0:56:13 > 0:56:16People like Cecil Beaton were the Malcolm McLaren of their day.
0:56:16 > 0:56:21They were popularising it, they were making their careers out of it.
0:56:21 > 0:56:25Cecil Beaton remained a Bright Young Thing for the rest of his life.
0:56:25 > 0:56:29That's why he was still hanging out with the Rolling Stones at the age of 70.
0:56:29 > 0:56:35So Beaton betrayed them, in a way.
0:56:35 > 0:56:39But people like Stephen Tennant and Brenda Dean Paul, who took
0:56:39 > 0:56:45it to the extreme, who either almost died for their art
0:56:45 > 0:56:47or sort of still lived in that moment.
0:56:47 > 0:56:52Stephen was still living in that moment in 1986 when I met him at Wilsford.
0:56:55 > 0:56:58Things hadn't changed. There were still letters from Virginia Woolf
0:56:58 > 0:57:01on the carpet as if they'd just arrived.
0:57:03 > 0:57:06Where Stephen retreated from public life all together,
0:57:06 > 0:57:10Elizabeth Ponsonby failed to notice that no-one was watching.
0:57:10 > 0:57:13Elizabeth kept on being a Bright Young Person
0:57:13 > 0:57:18long after it was prudent for anybody to behave in that kind of way or to
0:57:18 > 0:57:23so openly admit that pleasure was what they sought and that they would pay almost any price to obtain it.
0:57:25 > 0:57:29The path led down and ever down, so instead of going to the kind of parties that are written
0:57:29 > 0:57:34up in the Tatler and the Sketch, she's going to entertainments that are not written up anywhere.
0:57:34 > 0:57:37She's making friends yet more disreputable than
0:57:37 > 0:57:43the ones she made in the 1920s, and by the late 1930s, no longer a young woman of course,
0:57:43 > 0:57:49she's eking out a career as a nightclub hostess on remittances from her parents.
0:57:49 > 0:57:55And on the 31st of July, 1940, just as the Battle of Britain and
0:57:55 > 0:57:58the Blitz are about to be unleashed, her father gets
0:57:58 > 0:58:03this telegram from a doctor, "Regret to inform you Elizabeth died suddenly this morning."
0:58:06 > 0:58:09Elizabeth Ponsonby, that great mercurial figure,
0:58:09 > 0:58:16the great symbolic partygoer of the 1920s and early '30s, died of drink before she was 40.
0:58:16 > 0:58:20Elizabeth's passing was met with little fanfare.
0:58:20 > 0:58:22It's ironic that the bitter realities of her
0:58:22 > 0:58:29lifestyle and early death, like the Bright Young decade's miserable end, only underline how modern the era
0:58:29 > 0:58:35seems to us now and captures exactly what the '20s were -
0:58:35 > 0:58:40decadent, doomed... but eternally irresistible.
0:58:40 > 0:58:42The very essence of glamour.
0:58:51 > 0:58:54Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:54 > 0:58:57E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk