Juliet Nicolson - The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm

Praise for The Perfect Summer:

Sharp and rangy... Nicolson sets a lively, theatrical pace and makes good use of recurring characters.... [There are] many glittering pieces in Nicolson

The New York Times Book Review

Edward VII had died the previous year, and England was peeking out from under the Victorian hem.... Nicolson captures it all, down to the frantic silliness and boredom of the upper classes; she has woven the details of those last days before the Great War into an unforgettable literary history.

Los Angeles Times

As page-turning as a novel.

Joanna Trollope, author of Marrying the Mistress and Next of Kin

Brilliant... lucid, entertaining, and fascinating.

William Boyd, author of Any Human Heart and Restless

A book brimming with delectable information and little-known facts... With a real eye for telling details, Nicolson manages to describe every stratum of English society.... Where Nicolson is especially good, however, is with the royals and the aristocracy, whose country estates, salons, entertainments, and affairsdiscreet and indiscreetshe describes with accuracy and humor.

The Providence Journal

The blistering-hot summer of 1911... saw the beginnings of the slide from arrogant innocence, for Britons of all classes, that would carry them all three years later into the exercise in mutual mass murder we call World War I.... Ms. Nicolson deftly picks a cast of characters that represents each stratum of society and how those issues broiled along with the weather.

The Washington Times

Sparkling social history... breezy yet informative... Juliet Nicolson has created the perfect beach reading for Anglophiles.

The Christian Science Monitor

Evocative, gossipy... profoundly moving... Pour yourself some champagne and revel in the sybaritic trivia that Ms. Nicolson lays out so invitingly before us.

New York Sun

Meticulous... Nicolson beautifully captures [the] fever pitch, when it was as if time was running out.... The Perfect Summer transcends national boundaries: readers dont have to be British to appreciate her talent. Through rich sensory detail and captivating language, Nicolsons prose has the power to transport anyone into 1911 England. The Harvard Book Review

Stunning... utterly compelling. Joanna Lumley

A hugely interesting portrait of a society teetering on a precipice both nationally and internationally. The Guardian (UK)

Deliciously evocative... Juliet Nicolson has fashioned for us a treasure-trove, doubly perfect for winter.

Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and
the Madman and Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded

Rich and marvelously researched. The Sunday Telegraph (UK)

An intimate portrait of Englands elite that spares no details of their dress, manners, and social habits... Bathed in the soft glow of nostalgia, it is a love letter to a lost past that luxuriates in the pleasures of what is presented as a simpler, more stable time. The Seattle Times

A charming bit of social history about how the rich enjoyed themselves that final hot summer before World War I. Chicago Tribune

A stunning piece of social history... What makes Juliet Nicolsons work outstanding are the portraits it renders of how both the high and the low lived at this turning point in English history. The Buffalo News

Juliet Nicolsons brief, pre-World War I narrative reads much like a memoir, and through a prism of nostalgia tempered with suggestions of political turbulence and sexual dalliance, her book succeeds, ultimately emerging as a snapshot of a culture in transition. California Literary Review

A peach of a book... full of good things, sparkling, elegant, and often funny.

Literary Review (UK)

Juliet Nicolson transports us back to the enchanted and enchanting summer of 1911. She guides us through its four months in company with some of the most delightful people imaginable. It is a wonderful and poignant tour that proved to be a farewell appearance to their world.

David Fromkin, author of Europes Last Summer:
Who Started the Great War in 1914?

Detail makes Juliet Nicolsons portrait of a single Edwardian year such a fascinating read.... I felt transported into what Nicolson felicitously describes as one of the high sunlit meadows of English history.

The Mail on Sunday (UK)

A fast-paced commemorative of the social antics of the English upper class as well as the financial woes of dock workers and household servants... A highly entertaining and knowledgeable introduction to a world that was changed forever by World War I.

Hannah Pakula, author of An Uncommon WomanThe Empress
Frederick: Daughter of QueenVictoria, Wife of the
Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm

T he P erfect S ummer