Publisher's Synopsis
Dancing into Shadow in 1911 The summer of 1911 was one of the high sunlit meadows of English history. A new king was crowned; audiences swarmed to Covent Garden to see Nijinsky's gravity-defying leaps; the aristocracy was at play, bounding from one house party to the next; and industrial strikes exposed the chasm between privileged and poor, while children, seeking relief from the scorching sun, drowned in village ponds. What the protagonists could not have known is that in a few years time the world, let alone England, would never be the same again. Through the eyes of a series of exceptional individuals - a debutante, a suffragette, a politician, a trade unionist, a butler and the Queen - Juliet Nicolson illuminates a turning point in history. With the gifts of a great storyteller, she rekindles a vision of a time when the sun shone, but its shadows fell on all.