Hachette India

Young Bloomsbury

Nino Strachey

In the 1920s a new generation stepped forward to invigorate the Bloomsbury Group -- creative young people who tantalised the original 'Bloomsberries' with their captivating looks and provocative ideas.

Young Bloomsbury introduces us to an extraordinarily colourful cast of characters, including novelist and music critic Eddy Sackville-West, 'who wore elaborate make-up and dressed in satin and black velvet'; sculptor Stephen Tomlin; and writer Julia Strachey. Talented and productive, these larger-than-life figures had high-achieving professional lives and extremely complicated emotional lives.

Bloomsbury had always celebrated sexual equality and freedom in private, but by the 1920s self-expression was becoming more public, with cross-dressing Young Bloomsbury giving Old Bloomsbury a new voice in a chosen family of a shared rebellion against pre-war conventions.

Nino Strachey

Nino Strachey's relative Lytton was the first of many Stracheys to make their way to Bloomsbury. After studying at Oxford University and the Courtauld Institute Nino worked as a curator for the National Trust and English Heritage. Her first book Rooms of Their Own explored the homes of three writers linked to the Bloomsbury Group revealing changing attitudes towards sexuality and gender in the 1920s and 30s. Nino lives in West London with her husband and child surrounded by the displaced portraits of her Strachey relations.

@NinoStrachey