F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, the embodiment of the 1920s American Dream, asserts with absolute confi dence: “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!” He is not to be swayed. Gatsby’s ultimate dream – a plethora of multi-coloured shirts, the flash car, all utterly meaningless in his eyes – is to have Daisy; or at least the version of Daisy he remembers. He makes no allowance for the years which have passed, let alone her very real husband and daughter. 

Unlike the ever-idealistic Gatsby, it seems rather obvious – to us and to the baffl ed Nick Carraway – that you simply can’t. Nonetheless, with regards to music, films, television and novels, we do appear to be giving it a fair go. We are desperate to evoke and, in Gatsby’s vein, repeat the past; the latest instance being the Girton Spring Ball the theme of which is to be ‘Les Ann.es Folles’: a resurrection of 1920s Paris in all its splendour. In this notion of glamour and spectacle, lies the crux of our superficial fascination.

To many of those who’ve read Fitzgerald (or at least seen Baz Lurhmann’s reworking: an unashamedly simplifi ed adaptation, but with a kaleidoscopic palette to rival the most outrageous May Balls) the ‘20s look like one hell of a party. Be it France or America, the era is remembered as one of excess; bright lights and wild nights. The reality is rather more complex. Glitter and charm hid a thousand fl aws including prohibition and post-war rehabilitation. But the 1920s were a time of unprecedented liberation; the First World War was over, business was booming and society was shifting. 

Leaving the nuits folles of Paris for a moment, a very diff erent version of the British ‘20s attracts our attention. I can’t possibly be the only one amused and devastated by the events unfolding in the extensive grounds ofDownton Abbey. While a far cry from Gatsby’s nights of revelry, the goings-on at Downton are astonishing in their own right. In Britain too, society was modernising. While the situations were very different, certain similarities do emerge between Downton, Gatsby and innumerable other programmes, novels, or 1920s revivals. Feminism also did rather well out of the 1920s. Suddenly, women in Britain and the United States (although not in France until 1944) had the right to vote, while the American activist Margaret Sanger was spreading wild ideas about birth control and sex for fun. Women were freer than ever – embodied by the classic ‘20s flapper dresses.  

The 1920s are so entirely en vogue: the popularity of drop-waist dresses, beads and sequins makes the entire style utterly unavoidable. With the proliferation of fl apper hair and head bands, we’re all giving a vague nod to Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson and other inimitable 1920s screen sirens. As for the boys, Leo DiCaprio doesn’t look half bad as Jay; in a ‘20s suit, the gentlemen are dapper and all know how to dance (although somewhat differently from the average display in Cindies).

The sense of spectacle extends to the entertainment as well – an endless stream of jazz, orchestras, and whirl-you-round-‘til-you’re-dizzy dances. With Charlie Chaplin and the first ‘talkies’ on screen too, the ‘20s seem the most ridiculous fun. It was a golden age, of hope, chaos, splendour and lavish debauchery and it continues to capture the imagination today. In the current climate of problems at home, issues abroad, and a million little things to complain about (even, dare I say it, in Cambridge), the Roaring Twenties have come to represent an ideal of letting loose and feeling free. You can do anything you want to do and be anyone in the world you want to be. Who wouldn’t be entranced? 

Our fascination with the 1920s stems, quite simply, from that overriding buzz.  The ecstatic hope that anything or everything is possible. Change is in the air, making Girton’s theme all the more tempting, and propelling little remnants of a bygone yet longed-for era back into the present. Like the tragic Gatsby, we too are unable to repeat the past, but its hold upon us endures  and we cannot help but be swept up in and captured by ‘Les Annes Folles’.