Lost Girls

DJ Taylor’s new book is an exploratory and sometimes eye-popping slice of social history … Taylor is a strikingly versatile writer - novelist, critic, historian, author of the standard biography of Orwell, and the acerbic wit behind Private Eye’s What You Didn’t Miss column … If you have even a passing interest in human relationships and the imagination, you should not deny yourself the pleasure of reading it – John Carey * Sunday Times *DJ Taylor, who has previously written about the bright young things of the interwar years, makes a convincing case for seeing Sonia and her peers as a racier, tougher and far more intelligent group than has previously been allowed * Guardian *Lively account of the chaotic way of life at the Horizon office … In Lost Girls, Taylor presents a colourful portrait of this fascinating, sophisticated and highly sexualised literary world … expertly narrated … excellent descriptions of the daily routine in the Horizon office … a remarkable work and an important addition to the extraordinary wartime history of literary London – Selina Hastings * Literary Review *Entertaining, ever shrewd account * Spectator *Enjoyable … an often very funny chronicle of fiendishly complicated and rackety love lives … infectious … deliciously readable – Lucy Lethbridge * Financial Times *Enticing … Like a private detective on an adultery case, Taylor eavesdrops in bedsits and furnished flats, lurks in Chelsea pubs and Soho dives, reporting in a style both elegant and deadpan. His text is crowded with throwaway gems – Jane Thynne * The Tablet *Highly entertaining * Country Life *Immersive, intense and dense with detail, Taylor’s latest work is a wonderfully niche and pointed take on lost girls from a lost era; a real-life wartime drama, on an intricate and intimate scale * Irish Times *Engaging and stylishly written … captures the edgy atmosphere of 1940s bohemian London * Times Literary Supplement *A lively, perceptive, and gossip-strewn inquiry into an overlooked aspect of an influential corner of London’s literary life * The New Criterion *An empathetic group biography of four bright, beautiful, literary women in wartime London … highly entertaining account … insightful and empathetic group biography * Wall Street Journal *Thoughtful, witty writer … poignant * London Review of Books *Enthralling … because of D.J. Taylor’s vivid and affecting group biography, the “lost girls” will never be lost again * The Washington Post *

D.J. Taylor’s novels include English Settlement (1996), which won a Grinzane Cavour Prize, Trespass (1998) and Derby Day (2011), both long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Kept: A Victorian Mystery (2006), a Publishers Weekly book of the year, and The Windsor Faction (2013), joint winner of the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. He has also written several works of non-fiction, including Orwell: The Life, winner of the 2003 Whitbread Prize for Biography and, most recently, The Prose Factory: Literary Life in England Since 1918 (2016). He lives in Norwich with his wife, the novelist Rachel Hore, and their three sons.