Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation by Judith Mackrell

in her adult life she found herself emotionally and politically in tune with the rest of the population. She was focused on useful work, mostly translating for the Free French forces, but also finding the time to write poetry and edit a volume of poems in celebration of her beloved, desecrated France.
    The end of the war was, in some ways, a wrench, as Nancy was forced to reconsider her circumstances. Where should she settle? What should she do? The house in Réanville was out of the question. Returning to assess the state of it after the war, she was traumatized to discover that all her precious books and artworks had been looted or desecrated. Worst of all, some of the most viscious acts of vandalism had been committed not by the enemy, but by her French neighbours.
    Nancy couldn’t bear to stay, and instead travelled south, finding a small and very basic new home in a rural hamlet, Lamothe Fénélon. She was far from wealthy, but she was still independent, and for the next two decades she fell into a pattern of summering in France, then escaping the winter cold by travelling and visiting friends.
    It was a life that allowed her to remain free, but it was often lonely. No new political activity had replaced the camaraderie she had found in Spain, and while she raged against Franco’s continuing dictatorship, and against the world’s continuing abuse of blacks, she lacked both the financial resources and the personal contacts that would have allowed her to embark on any concrete plan of action. She was not a natural joiner of formal groups or political parties, and just as she became more politically marginalized, so she grew more isolated in her personal life.
    Nancy never lacked for company. She remained a charismatic presence – witty, informed, surprising to talk to and still astonishingly stylish. Aspects of her appearance might look eccentric in the 1950s – her armloads of bangles and flamboyant scarves – but her beauty was even sharper in middle age, and some men still found her mesmerizing. During her fifties she continued to find new friends – and lovers – wherever she travelled. Yet she was able to depend less on her older friends, as age, illness or geography unravelled the close communities she’d known in Paris and, at times, in London. When she and Iris Tree accidentally met in Rome, they both winced at the realization that it was twenty years since they had last seen each other. Iris, however, was far more shocked at the changes she saw in Nancy. She wrote to Diana that she feared their friend was living a life that was ‘somehow malevolent, bereft of surrounding sympathy or love’. 6 Certainly the rift between Nancy and her mother had never healed. During the war, as Lady Cunard was driving through London she had caught sight of Nancy walking along the pavement but hadn’t stopped the car. By 1948 it was too late. Diana contacted Nancy to tell her that her mother was dying and begged her to attempt a last reconciliation, but Lady Cunard had not asked for Nancy, and Nancy did not want to make any gesture of appeasement. * The only family she saw were her cousins Victor and Edward. Her unofficial father, George Moore, had died long before the war, in 1933.
    Nancy wrote a loving memoir of Moore, which, along with the book she wrote about her old friend Norman Douglas, was one of her finest pieces of post-war work. She still wrote much of the time, never abandoning her poetry, even though she had given up expecting any acclaim for it. However, the one book that publishers and readers most desired, her autobiography, was one she felt unable to write. She wanted no part in reiterating old gossip about Paris and the 1920s, believing that there was something morally repugnant in writing about any of her close friends who were still alive. It would be a betrayal of their intimacy.
    Nevertheless, Nancy was perfectly capable of undermining friendships by other means. Iris was right to observe that she