The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age
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Junior diplomat Harold Nicolson (second left, front), in one of the sessions at the Paris Peace Conference in the summer of 1919, which he described in every detail to Marcel Proust, being careful not to forget the macaroons
Queen Mary, Queen Alexandra and King George V walking across the Buckingham Palace courtyard on 19 July 1919. They were on the way to watch the London Peace Parade that celebrated the signing of the Treaty of Versailles which ended the Great War
Left: In 1919 a cunningly concealed bath chair and a hovering helper allowed the newly wed Lady Diana Cooper to attend the grandest winter balls despite a badly broken leg
Below left: Picasso and his wife Olga spent the summer of 1919 in London where he was painting the vast backdrops for Serge Diaghilev’s production of the new ballet The Three-Cornered Hat
Below right: Crowds came to see a spectacular show celebrating the achievements of the wartime hero Lawrence of Arabia, packing the seats of the Albert Hall during the summer of 1919
Right: Sir Edwin Lutyens dashed off an early sketch for his friend Lady Sackville to show her his idea for a temporary memorial to the dead of the Great War
Below: The Great Silence: Piccadilly Circus, 11 November 1919. Families huddled at the edge of the pavement, poised to dash across the street, a window cleaner steadied his ladder and the violet-seller fell silent. Over them all, the elegant stone wings of Eros were as ever frozen in motion. The only sound was the splash of the fountain
Above: Pam Parish aged three with her mother Ethel in 1919. On 11 November 1919 she fell to her knees to observe the first two-minute silence in tribute to those who had died in the war
Above left: Tommy Atkins and his fiancée Kitty were reunited after the war when he became a meter reader for Hackney Electric, disillusioned with his pre-war work as an under-chauffeur and disappointed by the lack of adventure and ‘ooh la la’ that he had hoped to find in France
Left: Doris Scovell, cook, and Will Titley, footman, had fallen in love ‘below stairs’ and treasured their days off together at the Brighton seaside
Below: The six sisters of an only brother Tom Mitford (here shown as a schoolboy at Lockers Park Prep School) found it impossible to refuse him anything