1922: Scenes from A Turbulent Year

1922. Empires fell. The Ottoman Empire collapsed after more than six centuries. The British Empire had reached its zenith, but its heyday was over. The Irish Free State was declared, and demands for independence in India grew. New nations and new politics came into existence. The Soviet Union was officially created, and Mussolini's Italy became the first Fascist state. In the USA, Prohibition was at its height. The Hollywood film industry, although rocked by a series of scandals, continued to grow. A new mass medium - radio - was making its presence felt and the BBC was founded. In literature it was the year of peak modernism. Both T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland and James Joyce's Ulysses were first published in full. In society, already changed by the trauma of war and pandemic, the morals of the past seemed increasingly outmoded; new ways of behaving were making their appearance and the Roaring Twenties had begun to roar and the Jazz Age had arrived. In a sequence of vividly written sketches, Nick Rennison conjures up all the drama and diversity of this extraordinary year juxtaposing quirky unexpected items with political events in this enjoyable slice of popular history assembled in a month-by-month almanac including most notable moments from science, politics, art and culture. Short chapters include Einstein's Nobel Prize, The Swatow Typhoon, and New Uses for the Aeroplane like failing to fly around the world. 256pp, paperback.