{"id":138463,"date":"2019-08-02T09:00:17","date_gmt":"2019-08-02T13:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=138463"},"modified":"2019-08-02T09:50:31","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T13:50:31","slug":"re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-Covered: From Bright Young Thing to Wartime Socialist"},"content":{"rendered":"

In her column<\/em>\u00a0Re-Covered<\/a>, Lucy Scholes exhumes the out-of-print and forgotten books that shouldn\u2019t be. This month, she looks at Inez Holden\u2019s <\/em>There\u2019s No Story There.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Canadian Munitions Worker during World War II<\/p><\/div>\n

In the late twenties, London\u2019s Bright Young People were on a mission to ensure that each of their many parties was more opulent and riotous than the last. At the \u201cImpersonation Party,\u201d for example, guests were asked to come dressed as well-known personalities. \u201cLondon\u2019s Bright Young People have broken out again,\u201d announced the Daily Express<\/em> in July 1927, reporting on the soiree. \u201cThe treasure hunt being pass\u00e9<\/em> and the uninvited guest already d\u00e9mod\u00e9<\/em>, there has been much hard thinking to find the next sensation. It was achieved last night at a dance given by Captain Neil McEachran at his Brook Street House.\u201d There\u2019s a famous group portrait from the evening that serves, according to the biographer D.\u2009J. Taylor, as \u201ca kind of Bright Young Person\u2019s symposium.\u201d It includes the brightest of them all, the socialite Stephen Tennant; his hedonistic partner in crime, Elizabeth Ponsonby; the photographer Cecil Beaton; the writer and aesthete Harold Acton; Georgia Sitwell; and the American actress Tallulah Bankhead. Despite the obvious visual draws of the scene\u2014Ponsonby\u2019s wig, Sitwell\u2019s false nose, Tennant elaborately dressed as Queen Marie of Romania\u2014one can\u2019t help but be intrigued by the beautiful young woman wearing a Breton top in the very middle of the tableau. Her name was Inez Holden.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Impersonation Party, 1927 (Elizabeth Ponsonby, back row, in wig as Iris Tree, with Cecil Beaton on her right. Seated from left: Stephen Tennant as Queen Marie of Romania; George Sitwell with false nose; Inez Holden; Harold Acton. Foreground: Tallulah Bankhead as Jean Borotra.)<\/p><\/div>\n

Holden was a journalist and writer. Her first novel, Sweet Charlatan<\/em>, was published two years after that party, in 1929, and she followed it with six more novels, a wartime diary titled It Was Different at the Time<\/em>, and two collections of short stories, the first of which, Death in High Society <\/em>(1933), was published in linguist Charles Kay Ogden\u2019s experimental Basic English (which later came to be associated with the \u201cNewspeak\u201d in Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/em>). Only two of Holden\u2019s works are currently in print: It Was Different at the Time<\/em> and the novella Night Shift<\/em> (1941), which follows workers in a London factory making camera parts for reconnaissance planes over a period of six nights during the Blitz. They appeared as a double volume, Blitz Writing<\/em>, earlier this year, edited by the academic Kristin Bluemel and published by the UK-based independent publisher Handheld Press. Wartime factory life might seem like a surprising subject for a Bright Young Thing, but the story of Holden\u2019s life is anything but predictable. In the twenties and thirties, she was at the heart of the most famous, feckless party-going set around, but by the end of World War II she had transformed herself into a writer of documentary realism with a serious socialist agenda, empathetically depicting the lives of the working classes. J.\u2009B Priestley, for example, described Night Shift<\/em> as \u201cthe most truthful and most exciting account of war-time industrial Britain,\u201d and when H.\u2009G. Wells first read it he wrote to Holden, \u201cYour book is first-rate \u2026 I\u2019ll admit you can<\/em> write.\u201d<\/p>\n

With their satiric depictions of the giddy antics of the roaring twenties, Holden\u2019s first three books\u2014Sweet Charlatan<\/em>, Born Old, Died Young <\/em>(1932) and Friend of the Family <\/em>(1933)\u2014stand alongside the likes of Michael Arlen\u2019s The Green Hat <\/em>(1924) and Evelyn Waugh\u2019s Vile Bodies<\/em> (1930). But it\u2019s her wartime writing, a triptych that offers windows onto three different aspects of the same world\u2014Night Shift<\/em>, It Was Different at the Time<\/em>, and the novel There\u2019s No Story There <\/em>(1944)\u2014in which she really came into her own. There\u2019s No Story There<\/em> is a particularly impressive and immersive work, and yet it is so very out of print that no images of the cover appear to exist online, and I had to read the book in the British Library. It details the lives of conscripted workers at Statedale, an enormous rural munitions factory. In fewer than two hundred pages, Holden paints a vivid and moving portrait of working-class life; the workers\u2019 daily routines, their pleasures and pains, not to mention the peril they habitually face in their exceptionally dangerous work environment. She\u2019s particularly brilliant when it comes to dialogue, \u201ca very careful listener,\u201d as the Times Literary Supplement<\/em>\u2019s review of the novel pointed out: \u201cThese snatches of conversation in canteen or pub that she sets down so shrewdly carry cumulative force and illumination.\u201d She\u2019s just as keen an observer of psychological states, and a sly critic of the governmental and institutionalized structures that keep the working masses in line.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Statedale, which employs an astonishing thirty thousand people, is described as \u201cseven miles of carefully-planned human paraphernalia: the \u2018contraband\u2019 huts where all workers had to give up their cigarettes and matches, the shifting houses where they must change into asbestos suits, the workshops, the canteens, surgeries, cleanways, explosive storehouses, truck sidings, and the intricate railway line.\u201d It is oddly quiet and still; a place devoid of both loud equipment\u2014\u201chumans \u2026 took the place of machines\u201d\u2014and frivolous chitchat: silence \u201cguillotined down\u201d on the workers as they entered the factory\u2019s well-guarded gates. The making of shells and bombs is an intricate, risky process that requires the utmost concentration.<\/p>\n

The threat of an accident hangs heavy in the air. Once in the official \u201cDanger Area,\u201d even the most mundane and tedious of tasks has to be undertaken with care. A worker named Julian (recently discharged from the forces after he was injured when his ship was torpedoed) is charged with wheeling trucks loaded with explosives between workshop\u2014\u201csurface-sunk, mounded-up [and] blast-proof\u201d\u2014and storage facility. \u201cSupposing one of them tipped over and fell to the ground?\u201d he thinks, assessing the boxes awaiting his attention. \u201cWhat would happen\u2014well, you know! A small speck of powder spilled, some sort of friction, what they call a \u2018blow,\u2019 and I should disappear instantly.\u201d His fear is no idle exaggeration. Halfway through the book, a young female worker trips while carrying a papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 boat of \u201cPowder K\u201d (the stuff the detonators are filled with). There\u2019s a sudden flash, \u201cas if we were being photographed at the seaside, or something,\u201d and her hands fly up to her face, blood pouring down between her fingers. In the time it takes to stretcher her to the Rest Room, she dies.<\/p>\n

Whereas the factory life described in Night Shift<\/em>\u2014from the noise of the machinery to the Blitz city setting\u2014is more familiar terrain, the world of There\u2019s No Story There<\/em> is no less real. Holden herself worked in both an aircraft factory in North London and an ordnance factory in Wales, so she\u2019s writing from firsthand experience. And yet it is decidedly alien. There\u2019s something especially eerie about the image of the workers, wearing rubber-soled \u201csneaker\u201d shoes and dressed in white flannel suits \u201cimpregnated with asbestos,\u201d their faces covered with the \u201cprotective cream and powder\u201d they\u2019re obliged to apply before they enter a workshop. It\u2019s an image that seems to belong in a sci-fi novel\u2014\u201cscientific, robotic, serious and aseptic\u201d\u2014a far cry from the turbaned, overalls-wearing factory girls with their red lipstick that Laura Knight painted. There\u2019s also something discombobulating in the way in which Holden, for all the authenticity of her documentary-style writing, doesn\u2019t use traditional exposition. Instead, she forces the reader to slowly piece together the details of this strange world she\u2019s describing. We\u2019re like the workers themselves, people \u201cwhose war-time job had jerked them out of their own surrounding and brought them down suddenly into a strange unfamiliar setting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cloud of humanity approached the first factory gates,\u201d writes Holden in the opening scene\u2014workers disembarking from the bus that brings them from the nearby purpose-built hostel, a \u201cbig place, almost like a small town,\u201d where most of them live\u2014\u201cand broke up into individuals.\u201d Of these thirty thousand workers, Holden\u2019s novel follows only a handful by name, each of whom is both representative and personalized. Among them, the Austrian chef who everyone knows was in a concentration camp, though he himself never speaks of it. \u201cMust be sad for him living amongst a lot of strangers,\u201d writes nineteen-year-old Mary Smith, a new arrival at the factory, in a letter home to her sister, which makes up the novel\u2019s final chapter. But the reader gathers that, in a way, everyone there is an outsider.<\/p>\n

One of the most interesting characters is a man who serves the purpose of being Holden\u2019s fictional alter ego: Geoffrey Doran, a bespectacled, brown-suited intellectual and \u201cOne-Man-Mass-Observation Centre,\u201d who carries a notebook with him wherever he goes, in which he obsessively records the conversations and routines of those around him. Not that Holden takes him (or herself) too seriously: after he loses his precious notebook in a blizzard, he\u2019s left scrabbling around trying to find it much to everyone\u2019s else\u2019s bemusement.<\/p>\n

In Mary\u2019s letter home she also tells her sister about the \u201ccinema girl\u201d Nordie, who used to be a journalist but is now in charge of screening films in the canteen to entertain the workers. \u201cI asked her once why she didn\u2019t write about the factory,\u201d Mary relates, \u201cbut she said, \u2018There\u2019s no story there.\u2019 I don\u2019t suppose there is, neither. The way you know people at work is different to ordinary life. It is jagged and uneven, not just straightforward like in a storybook.\u201d And yet the fragmented nature of this supposedly un-writeable novel makes it no less engaging. There\u2019s No Story There <\/em>challenged the prevailing notion that the lives of ordinary working-class people weren\u2019t a suitable topic for fiction.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

So how did a Bright Young Thing become a socialist champion of the working class? As D.\u2009J. Taylor points out, \u201cHolden\u2019s ability to move seamlessly from high bohemia to a political position that may have included membership of the Communist Party was comparatively rare.\u201d Holden was a woman between worlds and classes, equally comfortable with privilege and plenty as she was with privation and hard scramble. Despite rather grand beginnings\u2014her father\u2019s family was landed gentry in Warwickshire, her mother an Edwardian beauty and famed horsewoman\u2014Holden was working poor most of her life. To describe her parents as neglectful is something of an understatement\u2014she didn\u2019t know whether she\u2019d been born in 1903 or 1904, for example, because they hadn\u2019t bothered to register her birth. They favored her older brother, Bill, and sent their daughter to a school for poor tradespeople. Holden severed ties with her family when she left home at fifteen, going first to Paris and then to London. According to her literary executor, Ariane Bankes, Holden\u2019s \u201ccrossing of boundaries is entirely explicable in terms of her early rejection by her family and her subsequent rejection of all that her family stood for\u2014class values and all.\u201d So, too, Holden\u2019s friend, the novelist Anthony Powell, believed that her political opinions were a \u201csharp reaction \u2026 against the hardness and selfishness of Edwardian smart life.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Bluemel observes, Holden\u2019s immersion in and writing about the world of the working-class wasn\u2019t without precedent. Orwell, Isherwood, and Henry Green were all doing something similar during this period. But what was different about Holden\u2019s situation was that this was no poverty tourism; she was \u201cmotivated as much by financial desperation as literary ambition or socialist commitment.\u201d She had no safety net to fall back on. Her \u201chold on the privileges that distinguish the typical writer\u2019s life\u2014food, paper, books, a room (or desk) of one\u2019s own, and time to write\u2014was unstable.\u201d Many of those who knew her note how often she was desperately short of money, living hand to mouth from her writing.<\/p>\n

There is no account of Holden\u2019s intriguing life, nor, unfortunately, did she pen her own memoirs, yet one can piece together a fascinating portrait of her from the mentions she receives in those written about and by her more famous friends: namely Stevie Smith, Powell, and Orwell. Powell remembers her as \u201ca torrential talker, an accomplished mimic\u201d whose gossip was \u201cof a high and fantastical category.\u201d She was the model for Roberta Payne, the female lead of his fifth novel, What\u2019s Become of Waring? <\/em>(1939), and for Lopez in Smith\u2019s novel The Holiday <\/em>(1949).<\/p>\n

Her long, close friendship with Orwell was the most significant. It began with a brief affair, Orwell having \u201cpounced\u201d on Holden one afternoon in May 1941 after they\u2019d been for lunch at the zoo. \u201cI was surprised by this, by the intensity and urgency,\u201d she wrote in her diary. Three years later, in June 1944, she offered him and his wife use of her London flat when they were bombed out of their own. It Was Different at the Time <\/em>originally began life as joint project between Orwell and Holden. She was also a friend of H.\u2009G. Wells, and lived in the mews flat of his London home until Wells fell out with Orwell in 1941, taking his anger out on their mutual friend by unceremoniously evicting her. While such anecdotes are entertaining, Holden deserves a primary, not a supporting, role in her own story. With the publication of Blitz Writing<\/em>\u00a0and the recent news, which I discovered while writing this piece, that Handheld Press plans to add There\u2019s No Story There <\/em>to their list, I\u2019m hopeful that her resurgence might be just around the corner.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lucy Scholes is a critic who lives in London. She writes for the\u00a0<\/em>NYR Daily, the<\/em>\u00a0Financial Times, <\/em>The New York Times Book Review,<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Literary Hub, among other publications.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inez Holden went from London\u2019s high society to becoming one of the most interesting chroniclers of the working poor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1670,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46439],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-re-covered"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRe-Covered: From Bright Young Thing to Wartime Socialist by Lucy Scholes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"August 2, 2019 \u2013 Inez Holden went from London\u2019s high society to becoming one of the most interesting chroniclers of the working poor.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Re-Covered: From Bright Young Thing to Wartime Socialist by Lucy Scholes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 2, 2019 \u2013 Inez Holden went from London\u2019s high society to becoming one of the most interesting chroniclers of the working poor.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-08-02T13:00:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-08-02T13:50:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/shutterstock-249573385.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"728\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"424\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lucy Scholes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lucy Scholes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"12 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lucy Scholes\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f7d002776d4d7c0fdb6961eddb06dabc\"},\"headline\":\"Re-Covered: From Bright Young Thing to Wartime Socialist\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-08-02T13:00:17+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-08-02T13:50:31+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/\"},\"wordCount\":2350,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/shutterstock-249573385.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Re-Covered\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/\",\"name\":\"Re-Covered: From Bright Young Thing to Wartime Socialist by Lucy Scholes\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/shutterstock-249573385.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-08-02T13:00:17+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-08-02T13:50:31+00:00\",\"description\":\"August 2, 2019 \u2013 Inez Holden went from London\u2019s high society to becoming one of the most interesting chroniclers of the working poor.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/shutterstock-249573385.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/shutterstock-249573385.png\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Re-Covered: From Bright Young Thing to Wartime Socialist\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f7d002776d4d7c0fdb6961eddb06dabc\",\"name\":\"Lucy Scholes\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8fcb3b549485201ecf60f90fa5811784c042b8229af2de0c3d0ae1842eac9eff?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8fcb3b549485201ecf60f90fa5811784c042b8229af2de0c3d0ae1842eac9eff?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Lucy Scholes\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/lscholes\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Re-Covered: From Bright Young Thing to Wartime Socialist by Lucy Scholes","description":"August 2, 2019 \u2013 Inez Holden went from London\u2019s high society to becoming one of the most interesting chroniclers of the working poor.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Re-Covered: From Bright Young Thing to Wartime Socialist by Lucy Scholes","og_description":"August 2, 2019 \u2013 Inez Holden went from London\u2019s high society to becoming one of the most interesting chroniclers of the working poor.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2019-08-02T13:00:17+00:00","article_modified_time":"2019-08-02T13:50:31+00:00","og_image":[{"width":728,"height":424,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/shutterstock-249573385.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Lucy Scholes","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Lucy Scholes","Est. reading time":"12 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/"},"author":{"name":"Lucy Scholes","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f7d002776d4d7c0fdb6961eddb06dabc"},"headline":"Re-Covered: From Bright Young Thing to Wartime Socialist","datePublished":"2019-08-02T13:00:17+00:00","dateModified":"2019-08-02T13:50:31+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/"},"wordCount":2350,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/shutterstock-249573385.png","articleSection":["Re-Covered"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/","name":"Re-Covered: From Bright Young Thing to Wartime Socialist by Lucy Scholes","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/shutterstock-249573385.png","datePublished":"2019-08-02T13:00:17+00:00","dateModified":"2019-08-02T13:50:31+00:00","description":"August 2, 2019 \u2013 Inez Holden went from London\u2019s high society to becoming one of the most interesting chroniclers of the working poor.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/shutterstock-249573385.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/shutterstock-249573385.png"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/re-covered-from-bright-young-thing-to-wartime-socialist\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Re-Covered: From Bright Young Thing to Wartime Socialist"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f7d002776d4d7c0fdb6961eddb06dabc","name":"Lucy Scholes","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8fcb3b549485201ecf60f90fa5811784c042b8229af2de0c3d0ae1842eac9eff?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8fcb3b549485201ecf60f90fa5811784c042b8229af2de0c3d0ae1842eac9eff?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Lucy Scholes"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/lscholes\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1670"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138463"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138473,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138463\/revisions\/138473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}