ABSTRACT
When Bonar Law announced in 1922 that his aim would be 'tranquillity, and freedom from adventures and commitments both at home and abroad' he summed up the desires of the whole nation. Many writers of the time also argued that the emphasis on intellectual and scientific advance which had characterized European thinking since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment had distorted and crippled both the individual and society as a whole. The alleged shortage of young men in the twenties helped to accelerate the social emancipation of young women. The traditional female tactics were apparently felt to be inadequate to the times. The popularity of 'jazz' widened the gap between young and old by giving the young, perhaps for the first time in history, a musical 'culture' of their own. In cultural matters, people in the twenties were parcelled off, in the vogue words of the period, into highbrow, middlebrow and lowbrow.
