A Life Of Parties: Remastered Shimmer Edition.

Agatha Dewsbury’s name is no longer one to conjure with but for a time, in the late 1920s and 30s, the name was all over the papers, for she was one of the 'bright young people'. Agatha, with her best friend Stephen Wallingford and some chums, began the vogue for practical jokes, treasure hunts and fancy dress parties that attached the word 'roaring' forever to the 1920s. Stealing policemen's helmets, dancing all night at the Ritz and, on one occasion at least, breaking into a country house and setting fire to the nightdress of a duchess, this was the essence of brightness.

Born in the early part of the twentieth century and the social upheaval that followed the end of the first world war, Agatha kept the press entranced at the time and has fascinated readers and writers ever since. There was a period where Agatha Dewsbury could do no wrong; she was a moderately successful novelist, she had friends in high places and finished her education at a finishing school. But she was also what fellow writer Gertrude Primrose called 'lost'.

There was another side to Agatha. Born a daughter to a vicar and suffragette, she was always being labeled as beautiful, fragile, someone who loved a party. She travelled, became a writer and became a drunk. There were suspicions though never proven she was a drug taker and had sexual liaisons with other women. She was a lover, a mistress and, maybe a witness to murder. In her short life, Agatha Dewsbury changed from a suburban daughter to a darling of the newspaper gossip pages only to be scandalized and shamefully snubbed and ignored by friends and common folk alike. She was photographed everywhere, at parties, travelling in the east, sunbathing on the continent, and drinking pink gin in underground jazz clubs. She was captured laughing, smiling, clutching friend’s arms and waving. She was never photographed crying. Newspapers fought over her daily adventures, they wrote about the company she kept, prospective partners and alleged lovers.

And yet behind the smiles, behind the laughter, behind the mask and newspapers clippings, there was a lonely frightened woman. A woman who for a time cherished and welcomed the attention fame and notoriety brings and then suffered the consequences that recognition, fortune and scandal can bring.

But there is one small problem.

Agatha Dewsbury did not exist, nor did any of her contemporaries featured in this book, for the brutal reason that she was never born. The stories are fake and the news never happened. This is something new and strange – a fictionalized memoir about unreal people set in a real world.