The Long Week-End

The Long Week-End is a social history of interwar Britain, written by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge. It was first published in 1940, just after the end of the period it treats.

The Long Week-End
First edition
AuthorRobert Graves, Alan Hodge
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
GenreSocial history
PublisherFaber & Faber
Publication date
1940

Their story covers a wide range of popular and social themes, including politics, business, science, religion, art, literature, fashion, education, popular amusements, domestic life, sexual relations, and much else.[1]

The Long Week-End has gone through several reprints, the latest in 1994.

Historian Adrian Tinniswood named his 2016 book, The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House, 1918-1939, after it.

Reception

In a contemporary book review in the peer-reviewed Journal of Modern History, William D. Clark wrote, "To write a social history of England from the newspapers of the last twenty years… demands extraordinary powers of selection and interpretation. Mr. Graves has given us proof that he possesses such powers, but unfortunately in this book he resolutely refuses to use them, misled perhaps by the ideals of the Mass-Observation school. The result is a strange unfocused photograph of the times, in which, although the 'camera-eye' has not lied, it has failed entirely to introduce any perspective or integration."[2] A 1941 review by Kirkus Reviews summarized the book with; "a graphic panorama of fads, fancies, facts, foibles and fingerposts along the way from war to war... Thoroughly good reading of the background of those years, if one wants to look back."[3]

References
  1. John Lucas, The Radical Twenties: Aspects of Writing, Politics and Culture. Nottingham: Five Leaves, 1997. ISBN 0907123171 (pp. 123-25)
  2. Clark, William D. (December 1941). "The Long Week End. A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-1939". Journal of Modern History. 13 (4): 563. doi:10.1086/236582.
  3. "The Long Week End. A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-1939". Kirkus Reviews. June 15, 1941. Retrieved 19 July 2017.
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