Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent unused condition. Some foxing on page block but very light and not on page faces. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> It is not the book I intended to write when I began. Preconceptions dropped off one by one as I investigated. The period was not a Golden Age or Belle Epoque except to a thin crust of the privileged class. It was not a time exclusively of confidence innocence comfort stability security and peace. All these qualities were certainly present. People were more confi- dent of values and standards more innocent in the sense of retaining more hope of mankind than they are today although they were not more peaceful nor except for the upper few more comfortable. Our misconcep- tion lies in assuming that doubt and fear ferment protest violence and hate were not equally present. We have been misled by the people of the time themselves who in looking back across the gulf of the War see that earlier half of their lives misted over by a lovely sunset haze of peace and security. It did not seem so golden when they were in the midst of it. Their memories and their nostalgia have conditioned our view of the pre-war era but I can offer the reader a rule based on adequate research: all state- ments of how lovely it was in that era made by persons contemporary with it will be found to have been made after 1914. (MP)