Juliet Nicolson

A family memoir that traces the myths, legends, and secrets of seven generations of remarkable women All families have their myths and legends. For many years Juliet Nicolson accepted hers--the dangerous beauty of her flamenco dancing great-great-grandmother Pepita, the flirty manipulation of her great-grandmother Victoria, the infamous eccentricity of her grandmother Vita Sackville-West, her mother’s Tory-conventional background. But then Juliet, a distinguished historian, started to question. As she did so, she sifted fact from fiction, uncovering details and secrets long held just out of sight. A House Full of Daughters takes us through seven generations of women. In the nineteenth-century slums of Malaga, the salons of fin-de-siecle Washington D.C., an English boarding school during the Second World War, Chelsea in the 1960s, the knife-edge that was New York City in the 1980s, these women emerge for Juliet as people in their own right, but also as part of who she is and where she has come from. A House Full of Daughters is one woman’s investigation into the nature of family, memory, and the past. As Juliet finds uncomfortable patterns reflected in these distant and more recent versions of herself, she realizes her challenge is to embrace the good and reject the hazards that have trapped past generations.

A Memoir of Seven Generations

A House Full of Daughters

Chronicling four months during 1911, an evocative portrait of an English society on the brink of turbulent change describes such milestones as the crowning of a new king, strikes that paralyzed British industry, and the first London appearance of the Ballets Russes, from the viewpoints of a debutante, a suffragette, a trade unionist, a butler, a politician, the queen, and others. 25,000 first printing.

England 1911, Just Before the Storm

The Perfect Summer

** THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ** 'Juliet Nicolson is brilliant at recapturing mood, moment and character . . . This book is a must' Peter Hennessy On Boxing Day 1962, when Juliet Nicolson was eight years old, the snow began to fall. It did not stop for ten weeks. The drifts in East Sussex reached twenty-three feet. In London, milkmen made deliveries on skis. On Dartmoor 2,000 ponies were buried in the snow, and starving foxes ate sheep alive. It wasn't just the weather that was bad. The threat of nuclear war had reached its terrifying height with the recent Cuban Missile Crisis. Unemployment was on the rise, de Gaulle was blocking Britain from joining the European Economic Community, Winston Churchill, still the symbol of Great Britishness, was fading. These shadows hung over a country paralysed by frozen heating oil, burst pipes and power cuts. And yet underneath the frozen surface, new life was beginning to stir. From poets to pop stars, shopkeepers to schoolchildren, and her own family's experiences, Juliet Nicolson traces the hardship of that frozen winter and the emancipation that followed. That spring, new life was unleashed, along with freedoms we take for granted today. 'Frostquake is wholly remarkable . . . a rare and engrossing read that brought that time straight back to my memory and consciousness' Vanessa Redgrave 'As gripping as any thriller, Frostquake is the story of a national trauma that came out of nowhere and changed us forever. Brilliantly written and almost eerily relevant to our current troubles, I read it in one sitting' Tony Parsons **A THE TIMES/SUNDAY TIMES 'BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR' IN 2021**

The frozen winter of 1962 and how Britain emerged a different country

Frostquake

The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War

In the pre-World War II turbulence of England, a fatherless chauffeur shares an undeclared love with an Oxford undergraduate, a housekeeper hides her Nazi sympathies, and a woman struggles with escalating tensions in a friendship.

A Novel

Abdication

Selected as a Book of the Year in the Telegraph, Mail & Lady As read on BBC Radio 4 All families have their myths and legends. For many years Juliet Nicolson accepted hers - the dangerous beauty of her flamenco dancing great-great-grandmother Pepita, the flirty manipulation of her great-grandmother Victoria, the infamous eccentricity of her grandmother Vita, her mother's Tory-conventional background. But then Juliet, a renowned historian, started to question. As she did so, she sifted fact from fiction, uncovering details and secrets long held just out of sight. A House Full of Daughters takes us through seven generations of women. In the nineteenth-century slums of Malaga, the salons of fin-de-si�cle Washington DC, an English boarding school during the Second World War, Chelsea in the 1960s, the knife-edge that was New York City in the 1980s, these women emerge for Juliet as people in their own right, but also as part of who she is and where she has come from. A House Full of Daughters is one woman's investigation into the nature of family, memory, the past - and, above all, love. It brings with it messages of truth and hope for us all.

Peace at last, after Lloyd George declared it had been ‘the war to end all wars’, would surely bring relief and a renewed sense of optimism? But this assumption turned out to be deeply misplaced as people began to realise that the men they loved were never coming home. The Great Silence is the story of the pause between 1918 and 1920. A two-minute silence to celebrate those who died was underpinned by a more enduring silence born out of national grief. Those who had danced through settled Edwardian times, now faced a changed world. Some struggled to come to terms with the last four years, while others were anxious to move towards a new future. Change came to women, who were given the vote only five years after Emily Davidson had thrown herself on the ground at Ascot race course, to the poor, determined to tolerate their condition no longer, and to those permanently scarred, mentally and physically, by the conflict. The British Monarchy feared for its survival as monarchies around Europe collapsed and Eric Horne, one time butler to the gentry, found himself working in a way he considered unseemly for a servant of his calibre. Whether it was embraced or rejected, change had arrived as the impact of a tragic war was gradually absorbed. With her trademark focus on daily life, Juliet Nicolson evokes what England was like during this fascinating hinge in history.

1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War

The Great Silence

England 1911, just before the storm

The perfect summer

“Goodness, Abdication really is good. I’m in awe of Juliet’s ability” (Jessica Fellowes, New York Times bestselling author of The World of Downton Abbey). England, 1936. A beloved king is dead, and by year’s end, the charismatic new monarch will give up his throne for love. The world is on the brink of war. And in the tumultuous intervening months, three outsiders will find themselves embroiled in the hidden truths, undeclared loves, unspoken sympathies, and covert complicities of a glittering high society in the throes of upheaval. After a long journey from her home in Barbados, May Thomas secures a position as a secretary and driver and opens her heart to a man seemingly beyond her reach. Outwardly affable American spinster Evangeline Nettlefold finds her place in the uppermost social circles, but her growing resentment toward her childhood friend Wallis Simpson predicts disaster. A friendship catapults Julian Richardson from his mother’s middle-class parlor to luxurious dinners with the king, yet he cannot forget those who struggle outside the gilded gates, nor his uneasy affection for May. As addictive as Downton Abbey, as poignant as The Remains of the Day, renowned historian Juliet Nicolson’s debut novel is a breathtaking story inspired by a love affair that shook the world at a time when order and chaos battled for supremacy.

The story of life after the Great War: a turning point in history.

Living in the Shadow of the Great War

The Great Silence, 1918-1920

À travers ces mémoires familiaux – qui retracent les mythes, les légendes et les secrets de sept générations de femmes incroyables –, Juliet Nicolson, la petite-fille de Vita Sackville-West, enquête sur le sens de la famille, la mémoire, le passé. Dans les quartiers pauvres de Malaga au XIXe siècle, l’Angleterre frappée par la Seconde Guerre mondiale ou le New York des années 1980, ces femmes deviennent, pour l’auteur, des personnages à part entière et partie intégrante de ce qu’elle est et d’où elle vient. En abordant la perte, le secret, la jalousie, tous les désirs et devoirs qui peuvent opposer une mère et sa fille, en explorant le sentiment d’appartenance et ce qu’il peut créer de solitude, ce récit nous permet de pénétrer un milieu – celui de l’aristocratie anglaise éclairée – aussi admiré que critiqué. « Ce livre est une parfaite illustration du fait – trop souvent oublié – que les personnages de l’histoire sont réels, avec une réelle ambition, une réelle passion, une réelle rage. Ces femmes ont pris la vie à bras-le-corps et l’ont secouée. C’est une lecture magnifique, et un rappel puissant de la signification de notre lignée matrilinéaire. » Julian Fellowes « Une histoire hypnotique de filiation mères-filles dans laquelle le personnel est mélangé à l’historique pour un effet remarquable : parfois très émouvant, parfois empreint d’humour noir, il met en scène un éventail de personnages, qu’il s’agisse des danseurs espagnols, des figures célèbres de Bloomsbury ou de l’aristocratie anglaise. Vous ne serez pas capable d’interrompre votre lecture. » Lady Antonia Fraser

Mères, filles. Sept générations

England, 1936. Für die 19-jährige May Thomas beginnt das Abenteuer ihres Lebens. Gerade aus Barbados nach England gekommen, tritt sie eine Stelle als Chauffeurin bei Sir Philip Blunt an. Mit ihrer offenen, liebenswürdigen Art findet sie bei den Blunts schnell ein neues Zuhause. Und in dem politisch und sozial engagierten Oxfordstudenten Julian einen Freund, für den sie schon bald mehr empfindet, als ihr erlaubt ist. Zur selben Zeit hält Evangeline Nettlefold Einzug bei den Blunts. May schließt Freundschaft mit der lebenslustigen Amerikanerin, die mit ihrer impulsiven Art die britische Reserviertheit durcheinanderwirbelt. Doch Evangeline sorgt für etwas mehr Aufregung, als allen lieb ist. Denn sie steht in engem Kontakt mit Wallis Simpson, deren heimliche Affäre mit dem König nicht nur die Skandalpresse in Alarmbereitschaft versetzt. Nach und nach taucht May immer tiefer ein in die Verstrickungen der gehobenen britischen Gesellschaft und hat bald nicht mehr nur mit ihrem Gefühlschaos zu kämpfen ... Mit feinem Sinn für Humor und einem Gespür für all die Tonlagen des menschlichen Miteinanders schreibt Juliet Nicolson einen ebenso mitreißenden wie charmanten Roman über Herzens- und andere Angelegenheiten vor dem Hintergrund einer der turbulentesten Episoden der englischen Geschichte.

Juliet Nicolson

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