The first part looks at how architecture and design both created and reflected the spirit of the time. The fun and frivolity of Art Deco sat alongside the pure, functionality of modernism and helped democratise style. Streamlining followed, making sleek, sophisticated, elegant design part of ordinary people's everyday lives. At home, the radio became a beautiful object. In the urban environment a new aesthetic changed the way buildings looked, while planes, trains and automobiles started to shrink the world.
The story of 1920s London's Bright Young People is a tale of sex, drink, drugs and a gossip-hungry press. Beautiful and Damned traces the growth of 1920s London's bright young party set whose antics were enjoyed and scorned in equal measures by a watching nation. And the more artistic of the merry band - Cecil Beaton, Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford among them - saw their work make the characters and attitudes of the era both legend and fable. Contributors include Philip Hoare, DJ Taylor, Selina Hastings, Lucy Moore and Adrian Bingham.
Documentary which explores how the American movie industry changed British culture in the 1920s and 30s. The movies, the film's stars and the cinemas themselves combined to offer British audiences a glimpse of a glamorous lifestyle and the suggestion that they might achieve it. Selling a succession of rags-to-riches fairy tales featuring go-getting women like Clara Bow, Jean Harlow and Katharine Hepburn, American movies also fuelled demand for cosmetics, cigarettes and dieting. It was an era in which Hollywood changed what Britons watched, what Britons wore and what Britons wanted.
