The Perfect Summer England 1911, Just Before the Storm

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The Perfect Summer England 1911, Just Before the Storm

3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 · rating details · 555 ratings · 114 reviews

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...more

Paperback, 304 pages

Published May 13th 2008 by Grove Press (first published 2006)

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Nov 08, 2007 Mark rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history

I loved the subject matter of this book, but about three chapters in, I decided it just had to go back to the library because the writing was driving me crazy. An editor I knew once said that one of his reporters seemed to organize his stories by cutting his notes into pieces and pasting them randomly on the page. Juliet Nicolson is guilty of something similar. While she tries to organize this book chronologically, she seems to lack almost all sense of transition, so you can be reading about the...more

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Aug 29, 2008 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who likes history

A lovely, thought-provoking portrait of England before the First World War. Like 1599, it is a biography not of a person but of a year. I loved the way it brought together people whose names we all know (Churchill, George V, Nijinsky, Rupert Brooke, Virginia Woolf) with others less well known, authors like Elinor Glyn and Vita Sackville West (the author's grandmother), early union leaders Ben Tillett and Mary Macarthur, tattle-tale butler Eric Horne, and Churchill's fierce political enemy but de...more

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Jul 05, 2008 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people with little knowledge of England before the outbreak of WWI

Shelves: history

I have lukewarm feelings about this book. At times it was very interesting and I gained a general understanding of the culture of England in 1911.

However, I felt that this book would have benefitted from some tighter editing. The author jumped between topics with no warning. I found myself having to go back several times and re-read paragraphs because I couldn't figure out how we got from one topic to the next. In many cases, there was no rhyme or reason as to where we ended up.

This book was ob...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Mary Lou rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An enjoyable social history of a summer in a country about to experience radical change. The cast of characters is huge and varied: Churchill, Najinsky, Rupert Brooke, Virginia Stephen (just meeting Leonard Woolf), politicians, aristocrats, writers, dancers, servants, union leaders, dock workers, jam makers - in short, the entire population of England. The upper classes appear bored and bent on amusement, the younger among them rejecting their parents’ morals and mores - the ‘Corrupt Coterie’ co...more An enjoyable social history of a summer in a country about to experience radical change. The cast of characters is huge and varied: Churchill, Najinsky, Rupert Brooke, Virginia Stephen (just meeting Leonard Woolf), politicians, aristocrats, writers, dancers, servants, union leaders, dock workers, jam makers - in short, the entire population of England. The upper classes appear bored and bent on amusement, the younger among them rejecting their parents’ morals and mores - the ‘Corrupt Coterie’ considered itself particularly wild, even had its own language. The working classes, intent on improving their wages and living conditions, were involved in a number of strikes, though they and the increasingly strident suffragette movement were persuaded to put off protests and other public actions until after the Coronation of George V in June. All people were simmering and sweltering in the heat of a very un-English summer. It was a time before weekends, when the upper classes were invited to country houses for a ‘Saturday-to-Monday’ to which most women brought six changes of clothes for each day. On Tuesdays young women slaved over elaborate thank you notes they called ‘Collinses’. I liked the above and below stairs commentary from the journal keeping butler, Eric Horne, whose advice to other prospective butlers about to be interviewed was to ‘hold up your head and look like you have 10 000 pounds and a deer park’, who despaired of gentlemen who tried on dozens of suits and left them for him to pick up, who preferred those of old money to the nouveau riche, who once worked for a rajah, and who entertained the king and queen at lunch when through a mix-up in dates he was the only person left on the estate in Scotland when they arrived. His book, What the Butler Winked At, was a best seller widely read by people who employed servants and who wanted to know what those servant really thought of them. Events in this book seem to wander and it’s difficult to follow a particular person, but as the organizing principle is the months of the summer, I suppose there is a path through the book. I’m told by a usually reliable source that Juliet Nichoson is related to Vita Sackville-West, the implication being that the connection has provided her with sources for this period that might not have been available to other writers. I would have liked to have been provided with a bit more of an epilogue as I’m curious about the later lives of some of the people mentioned, but I suppose that would be beyond the purview of this book, and that’s what other books and the internet are for. I wonder if someone a hundred years from now who reads about the summer of 2011 will find it as unfamiliar a land as I did the summer of 1911.(less)

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Jan 09, 2013 Ruby Scarlett rated it 4 of 5 stars

The first half of the book could be called The Rich at Play, really. It's an overview of everything the rich would do during that summer to keep boredom at bay + a snapshot of the coronation, it's entertaining but gets redundant. The book becomes a bit more than just fluff later on when the author focuses on the country at large, the massive series of strikes motivated by poor wages and appalling poverty and quotes heavily from What the Butler Winked At in an attempt to report on the condition o...more

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May 16, 2009 Carole rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Set against the backdrop of the long hot Summer of 1911 we see English life through the eyes of several different people including

* Queen Mary (who's husband George V was to be crowned the new King in May) and who 'had never felt so lonely'
* Politician Winston Churchill
* Lady Diana Manners (a debutante) who was looking forward to a Summer of relentless partying
* War Poet Siegfried Sasson who, in the middle of the summer, said 'We seemed to have forgotten that there was such a thing as the fu...more

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Mar 27, 2009 Gabriele Wills rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history

For the privileged, 1911 was the last golden year of the Edwardian era in Britain. Juliet Nicolson, granddaughter of author Vita Sackville-West, delightfully evokes the ennui, scandals, and excess of that blisteringly hot summer when the English “danced on the edge of the abyss”. By focusing on the lives of the shy new Queen of England, the young, ambitious Winston Churchill, the beautiful, audacious debutante, Lady Diana Manners, the naughty, extravagant aristocracy, an observant, enterprising...more

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Aug 21, 2011 Jill rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: world-history

I read this book when it was first published and just got around to reviewing it, after a quick re-read. I have since read The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War by this author and loved it, so with hindsight, I can say that I didn't like this one as well but still give it four stars.

Nicolson gives us a look at the summer months of 1911 when England was suffering one of its greatest heat waves. Tempers were short as Churchill, as Home Secretary, aggravated the Parliam...more

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May 31, 2010 Alix rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm giving this a 5-star, even though this is a new writer. The writing style resembles stream of consciousness during the transitions, which is the weakest link in the book. However, the writer really makes you feel the concerns surrounding each social group she covers. This really tied this period of history together for me. I've studied different aspects of this period, but this is the first writer that I've read that has covered so many social elements in parallel - really helped my understa...more

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Nov 09, 2009 Keith rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, history-and-biography

This biography of the summer of 1912 is a fascinating at one of the hottest and one of the most interesting years before the conflagration of the First World War. The War is not discussed, it just hangs ominously in the background, a feeling sparked by references to German actions in Africa. The coronation of George V was the historical event of the year but the hot weather, industrial unrest, and the lunacy of the aristocracy play equal parts in this history. Nicholson divides the book into cha...more

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Mar 24, 2010 Leslie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Nicolson's eagerly awaited exploration of the Summer of 1911 is interesting, entertaining in places, even - but quite scattershot. The threads never quite come together in this erratically woven recounting of the political, social, and economic climate in one of England's hottest summers just preceding the First World War.

A familiarity, if not long acquaintance, with the many of the leading characters of the day is desirable, as Nicolson's swift transitions leave little room for introductions....more

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Sep 09, 2012 Lisa rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd never heard of this book until I saw it advertised by the publisher in the previous book I enjoyed. The subject fascinated me and I expected to learn more about the shift from the class system of upstairs downstairs fame to a blurring of the roles. A biography of a summer was an interesting format. But it is terribly written, little more than a reporter's notebook of jotted facts without transition. And the vast majority of the book relays boring facts about fashion and hair style of the ric...more

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Jul 29, 2010 Trisha rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Written by the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West, this book provides a fascinating glimpse into what it was like to live in England at the tail-end of the Edwardian era just before the outbreak of the first world war. Covering only 4 months, the book is filled with details about what was going on that summer in the lives of people from a wide range of social classes, professions, and backgrounds. Through their diaries, letters and observations we're given an overview of the events that were s...more

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Feb 13, 2012 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: edwardian

Enjoyable, although slightly odd look at the long hot summer of 1911. There are lots of interesting facts and insights into daily life; mainly for the upper classes and their servants. There were also some interesting leads to other books and references to follow and find. The focus is mainly on the upper classes with the Royal Family and members of the government having some prominence, along with some of their wives and daughters. These are predictable and confirm that the sex lives and loves...more

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Jun 06, 2011 Cindy Brown Ash rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Juliet Nicolson, granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West, wrote in her introduction that her aim in writing The Perfect Summer was to give the reader a complete experience of England in the summer of 1911 -- a summer when the rumblings of World War I were only on the horizon, like thunder on a sunny day. In my mind, she did achieve her aim. The Perfect Summer is a history with a short time frame but a deep reach, covering all strata of society from King George V and Queen Mary down to the dockworke...more Juliet Nicolson, granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West, wrote in her introduction that her aim in writing The Perfect Summer was to give the reader a complete experience of England in the summer of 1911 -- a summer when the rumblings of World War I were only on the horizon, like thunder on a sunny day. In my mind, she did achieve her aim. The Perfect Summer is a history with a short time frame but a deep reach, covering all strata of society from King George V and Queen Mary down to the dockworkers, chimney sweeps, and factory girls. The story unfolds chronologically, with details including meteorological readings, prices of various commodities, properties, and comparative incomes (among other things), but so utterly grounded in the experience of her representative figures (Queen Mary; Lady Diana Manners; Leonard Woolf and Rupert Brooke; Ben Tillman of the dockworkers' union and butler Eric Horne, among others) that the data is absorbed as atmosphere to a story rather than as data.

The book would have earned five stars if not for two perhaps nitpicky issues. The first is that Nicolson (who really ought to know better, considering her family heritage) repeatedly asserts that Virginia Stephen (later Woolf) was writing her first novel, mistakenly identified as Night and Day, during the summer of 1911. In fact, Stephen (Woolf) was writing The Voyage Out, which was her actual first novel, though it was known as Melymbrosia during the summer of 1911 and didn't receive its published title till much closer to its publication date of 1915. Night and Day, Woolf's second novel, was written after 1915 and not published till 1919. The other issue is that Nicolson refers to Virginia Stephen's brother as Toby, when in fact his name was Thoby. These are very minor issues, but because Woolf's story is very familiar to me and I spotted these inaccuracies so easily it gives me a little pause as to the accuracy of the rest of her story. But I am moderately familiar with early 20th century English history owing to my familiarity with Woolf's story (and a long-term interest in the history of the English monarchy) and I didn't spot any other glaring inaccuracies, so I would still recommend the book.

Overall, The Perfect Summer was a really enjoyable read, very informative, and unique among history books, and I would definitely recommend.(less)

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May 06, 2011 Leilani rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

Lots of fascinating details of England a hundred years ago. Nicolson focuses rather too much IMO on the lives and entertainments of the aristocracy, but those chapters are lively. The chapters on labor struggles focused on two interesting leaders & reminds you how awful the average person's life might have been back then. I wanted to read more about the suffragettes, but toward the end she mentions that they toned things down in 1911 out of respect for the coronation of George V, so all righ...more

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Oct 11, 2009 Lauren Albert rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history-british

This was very very readable. Nicolson immerses the reader in four record-breakingly hot summer months of 1911. She manages to move smoothly from events like the Russian Ballet's first performance in England to the Dock Workers' Strike. We meet many notable personalities--Vita Sackville West (the author's grandmother), Leonard Woolf and his future wife Virginia Stephens, Winston Churchill, Rupert Brooke, and others. We see balls and excursions to the country. But we also squalid urban tenements,...more

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May 14, 2010 Donna Jo Atwood rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: uk-history, nonfiction

This book follows English events both large and small during a very hot summer just before World War I begins. There are all kinds of strikes going on (working conditions are really pretty awful for little pay), the Sufferagettes are going strong, King George V is about to be coronated--and life for the upper classes goes on in the same aimless way.
Among the people followed that summer you will read about Virginia Stephen (later Woolf), Rupert Brooke, Winston Churchill, and Queen Mary, plus seve...more

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Dec 11, 2008 Arabella rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A mishmash of historical trivia and some impactful events with the only common element being they happened in the same few months in the same country. While the writer tries to create a synthesized perspective, it feels like she just read through one daily newpaper after another from that period and threw miscellaneous items that caught her eye onto paper. (The book is written chronologically, with chapter such as "Early June" and "Late June", which doesn't help). She provides some interesting d...more

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Feb 27, 2010 Caitlin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010

I liked this, but I didn't love it. The author had access to lots of different sources in telling the story of the end of the Edwardian era and chunks of the book are riveting, but lots of it rambles around in a random kind of way that detracts from the overall arc.

It's probably difficult for Americans to really understand what WWI meant to a generation of Englishmen. The casualty figures are staggering - 880,000 from the UK plus another 200,000 from other countries in the British Empire - essen...more

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Sep 20, 2012 Jennifer Forest rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this as an ebook and did wonder if in the transfer the publisher hadn't put all the text together in order, but judging from the other reviews no this was the style of writing. I did find that a little disconcerting. However, it is generally an interesting topic and an interesting read. She does provide lots of detail and insight into men and women from the period like Churchill and Lady Diana Manners. I learnt quite a few things about Churchill I had previously been unaware of and it was...more

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Apr 14, 2012 Deshay rated it 4 of 5 stars

My enjoyment of fiction set in this time period and my addiction to Downton Abbey caused me to delve into the history of the early 20th Century in England. This book covers many aspects of English life and concentrates on a myriad of events in the long, hot summer of 1911. While a little disjointed in places, it does provide a brief overview of a fascinating period and way of life. They were on the edge of so many changes and challenges. Life and culture was changing rapidly. This story sets the...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Very, very well written. I've owned this book for over a year and tried to read it awhile back, and put it down. I thought this would be a book about the top one percent wealthy in the UK in 1911, or a memoir about the royal family. I could not have been more off the mark. Juliet Nicholson takes several different subjects and POV and ties them all to the hottest summer Britain has seen in a very long time.

She does show us some of the escapades of the upper classes, their amusements and their lo...more

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May 01, 2012 Ashley rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, personal-library

Juliet Nicholson's The Perfect Summer had promise, but it didn't fulfill my expectations. I was looking for a book that chronicled the summer, but had an argument. Nicholson failed to present a lucid historical argument and because of this, the book meandered.

I was not captivated and it took me far too long to finish the book. I had to put it down only to pick it back up weeks or months later. As a history major, I was expecting to enjoy this novel and learn something about British society in th...more

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Mar 20, 2012 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: england, read-in-2012

"The Perfect Summer chronicles a glorious English summer a century ago, when the world was on the cusp of irrevocable change. In the summer of 1911 a new kind was crowned and the aristocracy was at play, bounding from one house party to the next. At a debutante charity ball where the other girls came dressed as as white swans, the striking Diana Manners made a late appearance as a black swan. The Ballets Russes arrived in London for the first time and people swarmed to Covent Garden to see Nijin...more "The Perfect Summer chronicles a glorious English summer a century ago, when the world was on the cusp of irrevocable change. In the summer of 1911 a new kind was crowned and the aristocracy was at play, bounding from one house party to the next. At a debutante charity ball where the other girls came dressed as as white swans, the striking Diana Manners made a late appearance as a black swan. The Ballets Russes arrived in London for the first time and people swarmed to Covent Garden to see Nijinsky's gravity-defying leaps. But cracks in the social fabric had begun to show. The country was brought to a standstill by industrial strikes; led by the charismatic Ben Tillett, the Southampton Dockers' Union paralyzed shipping in the south, causing food shortages. The young Home Secretary Winston Churchill worried in his diary that 'all the world is changing at once.'

"Through the tight lens of four months, Juliet Nicolson brings that portentous summer into crisp focus. Drawing on material from intimate and rarely seen sources, The Perfect Summer is a vividly rendered story of how, day by cloudless day, a nation began to lose its innocence."
~~back cover

This was indeed a "brilliant, lucid, entertaining and fascinating" book. Like Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men, I had expected this book to be a somewhat dry recital of facts and figures, slightly boring -- a book to be waded through rather than read. Instead, I could hardly put it down. It's not fiction, but it reads as easily and charmingly as good fiction does. The author cleverly selected people and events to give an accurate picture of the end of the Edwardian age, juxtapositioning them for the most contrast and continuity.

In many ways, these times are a mirror of those we live in today--the poor working long hours at menial jobs and unable to make enough to live on; the rich living lives of unbridled luxury and frivolousness. We can but wonder whether the Occupy movement will ever gain enough support to compel changes, as the 1911 strikes did.(less)

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Jul 23, 2008 Rose added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008

It took me a while to get through this, but I did enjoy it. I've just been saddened to find that Eric Horne's "What the butler winked at", which from this book sounds like a great read, is very hard to get hold of. (Edit - I have managed to get hold of a public domain ebook version from Demonoid. Message me if you want a copy.)

I learnt a lot from this book - I had no idea about the level of strikes and unrest there was, and I enjoyed the way the book was, in a sense, composed of vignettes of int...more

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Aug 27, 2007 Maggie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A history of the idyllic summer of 1911 - a summer of unsurpassed warmth and sun. Nicolson (who appears in Burke's Peerage) breaks her tale up chronologically, focusing somewhat haphazardly on the events of the summer: Lady Diana Manners, who flaunted the rules of a debutante; the appearance of the Ballet Russe and the glory that is Nijinsky; the striking on the docks and in the schoolroom; a young Cabinet member named Winston Churchill; romance author Elinor Glyn (the Steele of her day); the mi...more

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Sep 13, 2008 Arwen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: history lovers

Recommended to Arwen by: dad

Shelves: nonfiction

An absolutely magnificent collection of wonderful tidbits of information about a single summer, which comes together as a sharp-eyed portrait of a culture and place. Nicholson mixes gossip and statistics with quotes from queens, butlers, socialites, socialists, and poets, to give a well-rounded sense of England in that turbulent summer of 1911. The culture was changing with lightning speed; technological progress had eroded the age-old truce between the landed gentry and the poor masses, and the...more

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Apr 12, 2009 FicusFan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: english, history, memoir, near-past, non-fiction, social-mores, tradition, book-groups, wwi, read-2009, read-4-09

I read this book for my RL Fiction group - we do non-fiction as well.

It was interesting, had lots of details, a narrow focus, but needed a bit more context. It is subtitled 'Just Before the Storm' , but the only thing I can come up with is WWI. It was 3 years off however, so not really 'Just Before'. They were going through social change and conflict over it on several levels, but I imagine that is true all the time everywhere. If not the society would be dead.

I thought she could have set the st...more

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May 13, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: arts-and-historical

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 standstil...more

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About Juliet Nicolson

Juliet Nicolson is the author of 'The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm' and 'The Great Silence: Britain From the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age.' She read English at Oxford University and has worked in publishing in both the UK and the United States. She has two daughters, and lives with her husband in Sussex.

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