Who were they, the Bright Young People? Nobody, it turns out. To be sure, there were large talents and personalities among them, and each had flair of one kind or another. As a group, however, they present an image of unredeemed triviality. Less than the sum of their parts, they brought out the worst in each other, or at least the most superficial. They left behind few significant monuments and exerted little lasting influence. So why do they continue to fascinate? Why does their name still have about it a certain legendary ring? D. J. Taylor’s impressive yet numbing study simultaneously accounts for the lingering magic and kills it once and for all; while Taylor comes neither to praise nor to bury the Bright Young People, his book has the distinct effect of making them seem, in the end, dull, old, and scarcely human.

The term “Bright Young People,” as defined by those within the clique and the journalists who covered their every frivolous move, refers to perhaps a few score partygoers and -throwers who amused themselves at a series of festivities during the second half of the 1920s, most often in London, especially Mayfair, but sometimes in country houses. (Though often used synonymously, “Bright Young Things” is a much broader term, Taylor explains, “as imprecise in its way as ‘flapper.’ A Bright Young Person may have been a Bright Young Thing, but not all Bright Young Things were Bright Young People.”) The White Party, the Impersonation