It had been a summer of extraordinary political drama and equally extraordinary social splendour. Even as it contemplated the destruction of its privileges in Parliament, the aristocracy had massed in velvet and ermine at the Coronation on 22 June. Weeks of balls, dinners and garden parties had ensued as the thermometer nudged 100°F in the shade. At the Savoy, guests were sprayed with cooling ozone as they tapped their toes to the raucous strains of the ragtime that had just swept in from America.9
