4 SEPTEMBER 2004, Page 29

Pre-Waugh

From Tony Petry

Sir: Hugh Massingberd may think that 'Bright Young Things' is a 'journalistic solecism' (Letters, 21 August), but the phrase antedates Vile Bodies. In The Age of Illusion, Ronald Blythe quotes from James Layer's The Woman of 1926:

We've boyish busts and Eton crops, We quiver to the saxophone.

Come, dance before the music stops, And who can bear to be alone?

Come drink your gin, or sniff your snow, Since Youth is brief. and Love has wings, And time will tarnish, ere we know, The brightness of the Bright Young Things.

Tony Percy

Southport, NC, USA