The Perfect Summer - Rilegato

Music flowed with the lightness and flash of water under the striped awnings and from the balconies; while beyond the open, illuminated windows ... the young men, about to be slaughtered, still feasted, unconscious of all but the moment (Osbert Sitwell)

Listed as number three of six in the 'Bookseller's Chart' by Phoebe Bentick of Henry Stokes & Co. (The Times)

'With the gifts of a great storyteller, [Nicolson] rekindles a vision of a time when the sun shone, but cast long shadows.' (Waterstone's Books Quarterly)

"Nicolson on swimwear from Victorian times through Brigitte Bardot to today. " (The Spectator)

'Juliet Nicolson has taken this "perfect summer" as the backdrop for an ambitious work of multiple biography, which sets the extravagance of the upper classes against the increasingly desperate lives of the poor.' (Observer)

'I wanted to evoke the full vivid richness of how it smelt, looked, sounded, tasted and felt to be alive in England during the months of such a summer' (The Lady)

'Juliet Nicolson does not pretend to offer a close political analysis, but rather a thoroughly entertaining portrait of the period, full of memorable detail' (The Spectator)

'There is an unpretentious directness about Nicolson's approach to her subjects that gives the book a freshness and vitality. Happily, she also has an eye for the amusing or the ironic.' (The Scotsman, Rachel Billington)

'A fascinating read... I did indeed feel transported' (Mail on Sunday: Antonia Fraser)

'Hugely interesting... It's also - and this is a compliment - as page-turning as a novel' (Guardian Holiday Read Choice: Joanna Trollope)

The enchanting and absorbing story of a remarkable season; defining a world on the cusp of irrevocable change