They all fall in love with each other, they all sleep with each other, and jealousy and heartbreak are rampant. The problem with this book is that Strachey rarely delves deeply into events and tends to highlight those who, presumably, she has, or found, more information on.

I have long known of and been interested in the Bloomsbury Group - they are an incredibly well documented, romanticised and, dare I say it, likely overdone in many ways… However, bringing a fresh new lens to the second generation of the group, particularly as written by a direct descendent really reignited this for me. Written, of course, by a member of the Strachey family who had access to privately-held documents from family and friends, Nino Strachey brings some more obscure figures into the light of day while also presenting the more familiar figures such as Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Lytton Stratchey, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, E. Lytton Strachey denigrated EM Forster when a novel was successful but when his own book sold that was seemingly ok. Strachey begins though with a rather uninspiring, potted history of the Bloomsbury group, before moving on to the next generation – Stephen Tennant, Eddy Sackville-West, Julia Strachey, Frances Marshall and others. Having read this, I feel it will be of more interest to those who haven’t, perhaps, read as many books about the Bloomsbury group as I have.I definitely don’t think I gleaned as much as I possibly could from this by listening to it, and I do think I will likely pick up a physical copy at some point. The idea behind this title being that the emphasis will not be on Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, etc. Strachey is obviously a descendent of Lytton and her knowledge of family bric-a-brac is extensive so that alone makes it worthwhile. I definitely admire (most of) them, as free spirits, creative forces, and uninhibited lifestyle creators. in Bloomsbury, as a new generation and movement of youth stepped in to invigorate the already established Bloomsbury Group.

Any book in which the central cohort describe themselves as ‘very gay and amorous’ is going to be a winner for me tbh, and this was no exception. They pushed boundaries, turned heads and sparked discourse aplenty - and most importantly, revelled in it. Young Bloomsbury just BRIMS with the same kind of sexy vitality embodied by the characters Nino Strachey describes in such effervescent detail. Not because it was poorly narrated, but because there are so many names and connections and relationships that I so often lost track and wished I could flip back, or tab or highlight sections.

I liked the occasional mentions of wealthy queer Americans of this era, such as Henrietta Bingham and her girlfriend Mina Kerstein, who hung out in Bloomsbury and had some juicy affairs in the 20s. This lively group biography offers an intimate glimpse of the Bright Young Things, the artistic coterie that emerged in the nineteen-twenties as successors to the prewar Bloomsburyites. Forster's Maurice was not unpublishable but rather Forster strictly forbade to be published until after he died.

Revealing an aspect of history not yet explored and with “effervescent detail” (Juliet Nicolson, author of Frostquake), Young Bloomsbury celebrates an open way of living and loving that would not be embraced for another hundred years. This cohort still embraced art and creativity as their predecessors did, but brought new explorations of sexuality, gender norms, polyamory, and freedom of self-expression in all aspects of life. The most baffling part of the book, for me, came in the last chapters and the exploration of James Strachey's life that lead him to the USA and the bohemian scene there. Young Bloomsbury explores the transgressive lives of the second generation of the Bloomsbury Group looks at the impact new ideals and ways of being had on original members of the group.

Virginia Woolf’s affection-shady letters provide the spine of the narrative but its heart—the polyamorous relationship between Lytton, Carrington, and Ralph Patridge—is almost entirely neglected in the second half. After a fairly engaging start, the book starts to feel like a bit like you’re stuck at a party where everyone else already knows each other and think they’re way too cool for you anyway. As a straight forward history of the characters that can be said to make up the Bloomsbury set, both young and old, this is a reasonably good book. If you've read about the Bloomsberries before then this book over-promises and doesn't wholly deliver on its premise. Their abiding ethos is to challenge the stodgy, restrictive conventions of the Victorian Era and burst newness upon the world of arts and letters.

The book concludes that the Bloomsbury's were the first to have non-conventional relationships, but that simply ignores pioneers such as Edward Carpenter. The best audience for this book is folks who are familiar with one or more of the famous figures and desire more information about how they lived. First, I was quite happy that I really do know quite a lot about the Bloomsbury Group, because you need to know the major members of the group or you'll be completely lost with this book. Bloomsbury had always celebrated sexual equality and freedom in private, but this younger generation brought their transgressive lifestyles out into the open.A hundred years ahead of their time, these creative souls were pushing the boundaries of gender identity and sexual expression, and - surprisingly - finding acceptance among their friends and families. They created non-traditional family groups, lived polyamorously and without regard to the conservative laws of the day. She also doesn't really sum up their overall impact on British culture, ie she gives the stories of the key players, but not their lasting impact. I'd say that if you're new to reading about the Bloomsbury Group, this will be a good, if not innovative, introduction. Frankly, the only reason can independently identify Roger Senhouse is because he apparently enacted a sexy crucifixion scene with Lytton Strachey.