''The Long Week-End'' is a

social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

interwar In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War. The interwar period was relativel ...

Britain, written by

Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a British poet, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celtic ...

and Alan Hodge. It was first published in 1940, just after the end of the period it treats. 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. ''The Long Week-End'' has gone through several reprints, the latest in 2009 by the Folio Society. 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 ''The Journal of Modern History'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering European intellectual, political, and cultural history, published by the University of Chicago Press. Established in 1929, the journal covers events from appro ...

'', 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 Mass-Observation is a United Kingdom social research project; originally the name of an organisation which ran from 1937 to the mid-1960s, and was revived in 1981 at the University of Sussex. Mass-Observation originally aimed to record everyday ...

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." A 1941 review by ''

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...

'' 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."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Long Week-End 1940 non-fiction books 20th-century history books Books by Robert Graves History books about the 20th century Social history of the United Kingdom Works about the interwar period Faber and Faber books Books about social history