The Age of Illusion

After many years, no decades, we finally have all our stuff in one place. We just got back from a trip back to Virginia (and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware) to collect the remaining things we'd left in our local Public Storage facility. We flew back, which was also a first in a long time, then drove over to the beach for a few days. Next we returned to Alexandria, visited the Smithsonian and the National Gallery one more time, and then picked up a U-Haul truck, which we loaded up and drove back to Texas.

That took up much of the month of August, but after we got back, got the truck unloaded and the stuff squared away, mostly in the garage, I returned my attention to reading and writing. First, I started a new blog where I've been publishing my work in progress, my memoir of growing up in San Antonio in the 1950s and 1960s. But I've also been continuing my reading project, mostly books related to English social history and literary culture between to two world wars.

While we were sorting through our books after the move, I came across Ronald Blythe's The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties, 1919-1940, which seemed an obvious choice, since it is precisely an exploration of England and English culture and politics between the two world wars. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of the period, such as the founding of the BBC, the fame of T.E. Lawrence  and Amy Johnson (a female aviator), the Royal crisis of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, and various aspects of English politics -- from Oswald Mosley's blackshirts, to the various conflicts of Neville Chamberlain, Ramsey MacDonald, and Winston Churchill.

It was an entertaining, if somewhat idiosyncratic book. Some chapters were more interesting and amusing than others. But Blythe does have a knack for giving one a feel for the times without going over some of the same ground covered by the other books I've been reading. I would still rate Orwell the best reporter on this era. But Blythe is very strong on popular culture, especially the sort of tabloid stories that captured the public's attention, dirty vicars, and female body parts found in trunks, as well as the exploits of the Prince of Wales and his American temptress.

Not sure where I'll go next. Maybe return to some of the novels I had lined up earlier.