On Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the Wall Street crash caused a cataclysmic chain of events that affected nearly every country across the globe. In Britain, the impact was enormous and led some to refer to this dire economic time as the “devil’s decade.” 

During these years marked by high unemployment, hunger marches, and a growing class divide, the public sought escapism in lavish cinema musicals and Noel Coward plays about the private lives of the glamorous upper classes. Tabloids provided further distraction, showcasing high-profile murders and royal scandals, including Edward VIII's romance with American socialite Wallis Simpson. Meanwhile, the growing threat of Hitler and Mussolini reached British shores as unemployed young men and even aristocratic women threw their support to Oswald Mosely's black-shirted Union of Fascists. 

Historian Julie Taddeo discusses the tumultuous decade between the Roaring Twenties and the Second World War in which remnants of the Victorian past clashed with an increasingly modern, technological, and socially divided age.

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