GREAT SILENCE

Sub-titled 'Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age', the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson has become the voice of critical gaps in the fabric of British history. Armistice Day 1918 dawns with great joy for victorious Britain, but the nation must confront the carnage war has left in its wake. Nicolson looks through the prism of daily life to narrate the slow healing process. The burial of the nameless soldier in the Tomb of the Unknown brings closure at last. 'The Great Silence', two minutes observed in memory of those lost, halts an entire nation. Within two pages we meet Corporal Adolf Hitler, blinded in a gas attack after four years of fighting at the Western Front, the cloudiness beginning to clear but his vision still hazy. In London, a young diplomat Harold Nicolson was working in the basement of his office in Whitehall and the door of number ten was flung open by a hatless Lloyd George announcing 'At eleven o'clock this morning the war will be over.' Riveting and revealing details of the fast-changing lives of everyday men and women, colourful characters abound in this tribute to Britain's dead. 16 pages of photos, 302pp, paperback.