{"product_id":"the-long-weekend-9780099592853","title":"The Long Weekend","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e''A masterpiece of social history'' \u003ci\u003eDaily Mail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReal 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 \u003ci\u003eThe Long Weekend\u003c\/i\u003e, Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the truth about a world half-forgotten, draped in myth and hidden behind stiff upper lips and film-star smiles. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing on hundreds of memoirs, on unpublished letters and diaries, on the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls and unhappy heiresses and bullying butlers, \u003ci\u003eThe Long Weekend\u003c\/i\u003e gives a voice to the people who inhabited this world and shows 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e[A] fantastically readable and endlessly fascinating book\u003c\/b\u003e… \u003cb\u003eDelicious, occasionally fantastical, revealing in ways that \u003ci\u003eDownton\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eAbbey\u003c\/i\u003e never was. \u003c\/b\u003eIt is as if Tinniswood is at the biggest, wildest, most luxuriantly decadent party ever thrown, and he knows \u003ci\u003eeveryone\u003c\/i\u003e. -- Rachel Cooke * Observer *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTinniswood and his publishers should be congratulated for issuing this elegant, encyclopedic and entertaining history\u003c\/b\u003e… We are in the company of a confident and skilled historian who understands the mores of his era and wears his learning lightly… This is a handsomely illustrated pick’n’mix of mansions, manors, castles and palaces…. Tinniswood expands our Sunday evening viewing with the kind of detail you can’t invent… \u003cb\u003eDeserves to be on every costume drama producer’s bookshelf.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Virginia Nicholson * The Times *\u003cbr\u003eHe has produced \u003cb\u003ea luscious, summery book\u003c\/b\u003e, full of amiable anecdotes and photographs of striking interiors, celebrating headstrong optimists who defied the defeatism of the times. \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Long Weekend\u003c\/i\u003e resembles a well-kept hothouse festooned with fruit ripe for the plucking\u003c\/b\u003e. -- Richard Davenport-Hines * Sunday Times *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWonderfully opulent, richly textured\u003c\/b\u003e… The opening chapters of \u003ci\u003eThe Long Weekend\u003c\/i\u003e paint an evocative picture… In telling us how the English country house changed, he is, of course, telling us how England changed too. -- Xan Brooks * Sunday Telegraph *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e[A] masterpiece of social history.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Roger Lewis * Daily Mail *\u003cbr\u003eMany of Tinniswood’s anecdotes are extraordinary… \u003cb\u003ePainstakingly researched \u003c\/b\u003edetail that makes \u003ci\u003eThe Long Weekend\u003c\/i\u003e so entertaining… A rich, multilayered and well-illustrated account of a style of live that disappeared with the Second World War. \u003cb\u003eLovers of…\u003ci\u003eBrideshead Revisited\u003c\/i\u003e will relish it.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Charlotte Heathcote * Sunday Express *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e[A] deliciously jaunty and wonderfully knowledgeable book\u003c\/b\u003e… Tinniswood displays a terrific insider’s grasp of gossip, while cramming his text with the stories of sport, sex, food, royalty, design, ruination and joy that defined these mansions… \u003cb\u003eMeticulous, irresistible story.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Juliet Nicolson * Spectator *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThis delicious book achieves completely what it sets out to do.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Marcus Berkmann * Daily Mail *\u003cbr\u003eTinniswood gives us many entertaining stories about the whimsical extravagances of the new country-housers… \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Long Weekend\u003c\/i\u003e is a celebration of fantasy and yearning \u003c\/b\u003ecunningly wrapped up in pragmatism and practicality: about ancient castles with top-notch plumbing. -- Lucy Lethbridge * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAlmost indecently enjoyable\u003c\/b\u003e… Splendidly contrary book… \u003cb\u003e[Tinniswood has a]  sharp pen and a squirrel’s eye for detail\u003c\/b\u003e… Erudite, funny and oddly poignant. -- Miranda Seymour * Literary Review *","brand":"Vintage Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48732323447127,"sku":"9780099592853","price":17.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780099592853.jpg?v=1719996410","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-long-weekend-9780099592853","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}