Oxford-London-Hollywood: Beverley Nichols

This omnibus volume contains: Twenty-Five: ‘Being a young man’s candid recollections of his elders and betters’, and that is what Nicols gives: pen portraits of the people he has met, rather than a portrait of himself. He leaves Oxford  to go to America as ‘Secretary to the British Universities Mission to the United States’; has a talk with President Wilson and gives pen portraits of John Masefield, Robert Bridges, W. B. Yeats, G. K. Chesterton, Mrs Asquith, Winston Churchill, Horatio Bottomley, the Sitwells, Compton Mackenzie, the King and Queen of Greece, Elinor Glynn, Noel Coward, Somerset Maugham, H. L. Mencken and Hugh Walpole - among others. Are They The Same At Home?  A series of short journalistic articles and "bouquets diffidently distributed" - informal observations and social interactions with famous writers, artists, and performers of the era. Includes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Margaret Kennedy, Arnold Bennett, E.F. Benson, Anthony Hope, Rose Macaulay, Sir Edwin Lutyens, Somerset Maugham and a very young Noel Coward. The Star Spangled Manner:  Essays on American life as viewed from an British point-of-view just after the Great War and just months before the stock market crash of 1929. Nichols meets with Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), Charlie Chaplin, the President for the Suppression of Vice and visits speakeasies to develop an interesting take on Prohibition.