THE GREAT SILENCE by Juliet Nicolson (non-fic)

This book follows The Perfect Summer, Juliet Nicolson's previous study of the social life of Britain just before the First World War.  This time she concentrates on the two years after the war has ended and before the Jazz Age has begun.  It is fascinating look at, as well as a reminder, of what civilians and returning veterans have to deal with, as a major war winds down.  You may have recently viewed the popular t.v. show Downton Abby and seen a small piece of this readjustment.  But, the reality was so much larger than that.

At the end of the war, 3,500,000 men had to be reabsorbed into British society.  They returned to a people who did not want to be reminded of the horrors these shell-shocked veterns, many suffering with PTSD, brought with them.  Many of those returning had missing limbs and horribly disfigured faces.  There is an enlightening account of a dedicated and brilliant surgeon from New Zealand named Harold Gillies who in 1917 established the first hospital devoted solely to reconstruction of faces, taking on the most difficult and tragic cases.  Gillies worked with a team of artists who formed visual reconstructions that the doctors used in repairing facial damage.  There is an eerie photo in the book of all these molded likenesses hanging on the hospital wall.  Each belonging to a real person.

Equally tragic are the stories of missing limbs in this age before social security or pension benefits.  It is horrifying to learn that government recompense was doled out according to which limb was lost.  If a man lost a right arm, he would receive 16 shillings, less for a left arm, something less for a leg and nothing for a face.

In contrast to the tragic lives of the returning warriors, are the accounts of the dawn of the decade of the 20s and the excesses of those like the Gatsbys of the world who were making money one way or another.  Large country homes and estates were being sold off to the nouveau riche and industrial giants.  Old families were falling into genteel poverty.  The frantic quest for good times was dogged by the arrival of influenza, popularly known as the Spanish Flu which killed off 40-50 million people world wide.

The author is the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson.  There is a wealth of first hand material in the archives of her own famous family for her to draw on.  Despite this, Nicolson is at her best when describing the mixture of hardship and good times in this short period before the boom of the 1920s, rather than the excesses of the more privleged class.  If you have read a lot about this era, you will not find much new material in this book.  However, if it is an unfamiliar period to you, this book is a good introduction.