This is just a fraction of the background reading I did, but you can see that I largely eschewed traditional history books in favour of the gossipy, chattering kind. Shrines of Gaiety is fiction, not history.
And yes, I read The Green Hat by Michael Arlen (Heinemann, 1924), but it’s difficult from this standpoint in time to see why it caused so much fuss.
As ever, there are real events in this novel and real people, but they are heavily outweighed by the fictional. The then Prince of Wales really did attend a fancy-dress party in the garb of the Ku Klux Klan, but I have no evidence that the Aga Khan went about with liquorice chews in his pocket. And so on. Some small details have been bent to my will—Niven, for example, races a dog at White City, but the track there wasn’t opened until the following year.
The novel begins just before the General Strike in May 1926—although no one except Ramsay is interested in the unrest happening in the country—so although that’s a fixed foot, some things have shifted slightly. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd wasn’t published until June 1926, so Ramsay would not have been able to read it in May. I could go on, but I won’t, I’m just trying to pre-empt criticism!
The Bow Street police station was very real and is now a five-star hotel, although part of it has been preserved as a small but interesting museum. And I would commend to you W. Slagter’s 1926 book entitled Cocktails American-en Fancy Drinks IJsrecepten en-Dranken (it’s Dutch). You can find it online at https://euvs-vintage-cocktail-books.cld.bz/?Vintage-Cocktail-Books-Netherlands/?1926-Cocktails-by-W-Slagter/?IV. It’s the most extensive list of “historic” cocktails you’ll ever find. Sadly, I have tasted none of them.
About the Author
Kate Atkinson won the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her four bestselling novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie became the BBC television series Case Histories, starring Jason Isaacs. Her 2013 novel, Life After Life, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and voted Book of the Year by independent booksellers’ associations on both sides of the Atlantic. It also won the Costa Novel Award, as did her subsequent novel A God in Ruins (2015). She has written twelve groundbreaking, bestselling books and lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.