England: The Last Hurrah

Dafydd Jones (b.1956) grew up in Oxford and started working for the Bodleian Library aged 16. His pictures of the Oxford University 'Bright Young Things' launched his career. With work published in the Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New York Observer, The Sunday Telegraph, The Times, Independent and Oldie, his photography is held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the Hyman Collection of British Photography, London; the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol; the Opsis Foundation, New York; and the Yale Museum of British Art, New Haven.

"...the panorama of a self-forgotten milieu."

"Toffs behaving badly: 1980s high society in photos."

"Society photographer Dafydd Jones on the special edition of his book capturing the Oxford of the 1980s."

“The pictorial equivalents of Evelyn Waugh’s sentences.”

"In England: The Last Hurrah (ACC Art Books), photographer, Dafydd Jones, provides an inside look at the fan- tastical pomp and promenading of England’s upper crust from a bygone era."

"Photo London offers a host of panels, book signings, workshops, and exhibitions—don’t miss Dafydd Jones’s “England: The Last Hurrah,” photographs that document the Eton picnics and tony birthday parties attended by the country’s upper echelons in the 1980s."

"Modest though he is, Dafydd’s photographs will endure for having perfectly captured a society on the brink of decline. Unmissable listening."

"The image, along with others from the time, appears in a new book, England: The Last Hurrah (ACC Art Books), by photographer Dafydd Jones, who has worked for The Times, The Daily Telegraph and Tatler in a career that started in the 80s."

"A nostalgic remembrance of things past, Jones's newest photo book, England: The Last Hurrah, is a brilliant pre-social media feed of saucy snaps that are sure to entertain."

"Dafydd Jones has been photographing the great and good at play for five decades…we sat down with Jones to discover more about his candid photography."

"…presents this irreverent and intimate portrait of birthday parties and charity balls, Eton picnics and private school celebrations."

"Learning on the job, Jones developed his signature style, blending charm, mayhem, and wit into a whirlwind tour of balls, regattas, hunts, polo matches and weddings. Now, Jones looks back one that pivotal era in the new book, England: The Last Hurrah (ACC Art Books)."

"The photos taken by Dafydd Jones during his Tatler years are now brought together in a collection, England: The Last Hurrah, published by the English house ACC Art Book. We see teenagers smoking cigars, students throwing young women into fountains, splashing themselves with whipped cream and doing just about anything that comes to mind."

"Are the 'Bright Young Things' still enjoying the limelight? The party exploits of the gilded generation lit up the 80s with some even catching the attention of Hollywood - but as CLAUDIA JOSEPH finds out, for some those days now seem a world away."

"With the empire mired in deep Brexit doldrums, perhaps a nostalgic dose of time travel is in order. Please, have a gander at The Last Hurrah."

“Parties are a theater,” the photographer Dafydd Jones says. “And I just try to take photographs of the characters in that theater.”

“Photographer Dafydd Jones’s latest book, England: The Last Hurrah is a fly-on-the-wall account of eighties upper-class England at its most riotous and vulnerable.”

"...irreverent and intimate portrait of birthday parties and charity balls, Eton picnics and private school celebrations."

"With a new volume of photos having just been published, we sat down with Jones to discover more about his candid photography and what has changed since he attended high society events in the early 1980s."

“Jones manages to flatter his subject in sometimes totally absurd situations, particularly because he photographs exclusively in black and white.”

"Wonderfully ironic, every point in the picture ignites and knows how to entertain very well."

"Dafydd was at the heart of the social scene at Oxbridge and shows an indulgent and drunken crowd in the 80's. He appears to be entirely unnoticed and it is a great documentation of a wreckless age."

"Photographer Dafydd Jones’ book, released earlier this year, takes stock of England’s ruling classes in all their champagne-soaked vulnerability."

“Dafydd catches those moments of genuine exhilaration, wealth and youth.”

"But in the Vanity Fair pantheon, no one has documented black-and-white nightlife with greater flashes (pun intended) of wit, yarbles, and gonzo brio than the British lensman Dafydd Jones."