1920s Notebook

THE Roaring Twenties are often seen as a carefree, fickle era, full of fast men driving faster cars, paired with feisty, newly independent women. It was also, however, the decade that gave birth to cornerstones that hold the British way of life together. Nothing better represents this than the arrival of a baby girl, Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor of York, on April 21, 1926. Unbeknownst to her or her loving parents, she would become Britain’s longest-reigning monarch with 70 years—a public-service record that is both sobering and mind boggling.

The decade also saw the birth of other still-familiar, still-cherished British institutions: the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1927 (technically, it was reborn,