The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars

Tinniswood, Adrian

ISBN 10: 0224099450 / ISBN 13: 9780224099455

Published by Jonathan Cape, 2016

Green cloth boards with gilt lettering to spine. Very slight bumping to top spine end; otherwise in 'fine' condition with pages free from marks or inscriptions. Unclipped jacket with light edge wear. Please see images for further details.

Synopsis: There is nothing quite as beautiful as an English country house in summer. And there has never been a summer quite like that Indian summer between the two world wars, a period of gentle decline in which the sun set slowly on the British Empire and the shadows lengthened on the lawns of a thousand stately homes.

Real life in the country house during the 1920s and 1930s was not always so sunny. By turns opulent and ordinary, noble and vicious, its shadows were darker. In The Long Weekend, Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the truth about a world half-forgotten, draped in myth and hidden behind stiff upper lips and film-star smiles. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, on unpublished letters and diaries, on the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls and unhappy heiresses and bullying butlers, The Long Weekend gives a voice to the people who inhabited this world. In a definitive social history which combines anecdote and narrative with scholarship. Seller Inventory # 26015

Synopsis:

‘[A] fantastically readable and endlessly fascinating book… Delicious, occasionally fantastical, revealing in ways that Downtown Abbey never was.’ Rachel Cooke, Observer

A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year

There is nothing quite as beautiful as an English country house in summer. And there has never been a summer quite like that Indian summer between the two world wars, a period of gentle decline in which the sun set slowly on the British Empire and the shadows lengthened on the lawns of a thousand stately homes.

Real life in the country house during the 1920s and 1930s was not always so sunny. By turns opulent and ordinary, noble and vicious, its shadows were darker. In The Long Weekend, Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the truth about a world half-forgotten, draped in myth and hidden behind stiff upper lips and film-star smiles. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, on unpublished letters and diaries, on the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls and unhappy heiresses and bullying butlers, The Long Weekend gives a voice to the people who inhabited this world. In a definitive social history which combines anecdote and narrative with scholarship, it brings the stately homes of England to life, giving readers an insight into the guilt and the gingerbread, and showing how the image of the country house was carefully protected by its occupants above and below stairs, and how the reality was so much more interesting than the dream.

About the Author: Adrian Tinniswood is a Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Buckingham and the author of many books, including The Rainborowes. He lives in Bath, England.

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Long Weekend: Life in the English ...
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Publication Date: 2016
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition