The Long Weekend

"[Tinniswood] reveals the English country house as a vibrant enterprise, benefitting from new owners, money, and architects bringing contemporary ideas to the art of country living. Informative and entertaining, Tinniswood's meticulous research brings us familiar names, such as the Astors and Edward VIII, while introducing us to lesser-known homeowners who wished to create their own modernist vision."

"Tinniswood elegantly explores the glamorous interwar age of English rural getaways, revealing the not-so-secret affairs of the inhabitants and the reinterpretation of architectural and interior design.... Tinniswood's lovely chronological ode to a past lifestyle brims with tales of the elite's tumultuous weekends and shows how the country house's purpose changed with the times as the old social order came to a close."

"With scholarly aplomb and gossipy relish, historian Tinniswood pulls open the grand front doors of these captivating castles to reveal their innermost workings and outward allure. Now that Downton Abbey is no more, fans of this halcyon, refined world can once again immerse themselves in Britain's quintessential golden era."

"Beguiling.... Stuffed with eye-catching detail and apt quotations."

"Tinniswood gives us many entertaining stories about the whimsical extravagances of the new country-housers.... The Long Weekend is a celebration of fantasy and yearning cunningly wrapped up in pragmatism and practicality: about ancient castles with top-plumbing."

"An engaging new account of inter-war country-house life.... Mr. Tinniswood provides rich detail from all corners, uncovering plenty of angst, but also much optimism--until 1939."

"Swans in the moat, inglenooks and romantic conservatism...but Adrian Tinniswood's hugely enjoyable, unsnobbish book uncovers another, more subversive, side to the story."

"[The] book combines a panoramic view of life and architecture in the interwar years with pin-sharp detail and the sort of springy prose that comes with a complete command of the material."

"[A] masterpiece of social history."

"Tinniswood is a learned architectural scholar without a jot of pedantry. He has produced a luscious, summery book, full of amiable anecdotes and photographs of striking interiors, celebrating headstrong optimists who defied the defeatism of the times. The Long Weekend resembles a well-kept hothouse festooned with fruit ripe for the plucking."

"[W]onderfully opulent, richly textured..... In telling us how the English country house changed, [Tinniswood] is, of course, telling us how England changed, too."

"Tinniswood's book is erudite, funny, and oddly poignant."

"[H]ighly enjoyable... this is a delicious cocktail of a book, combining many ingredients and presenting an informed survey of the interwar years as seductively as that period (at least in this rarified sphere) demands."

"[A] richly researched story about the rise and fall and transformation of country-house living.... An enjoyable tour with a genial, informed, devoted docent."

"Still yearning for Downton Abbey? Adrian Tinniswood's The Long Weekend :Life in the English Country House, 1918-1939 is probably the necessary antidote. A wonky, veritable tell-all, a who's who of British gentry.... Tales about piracy, crookery and shenanigans involving the supremely well-to-do are always intriguing and entertaining."

"It can't have been easy, but Adrian Tinniswood and his publishers should be congratulated for issuing this elegant, encyclopaedic and entertaining history of English country house life between the wars without ever once mentioning Downton Abbey.... The Long Weekend supplies a potent fix of period locations, upstairs-downstairs drama and higher gossip--all of it factual--for the most Downton-addicted of readers.... We are in the company of a confident and skilled historian who understands the mores of his era and wears his learning lightly.... Tinniswood expands our Sunday evening viewing with the kind of detail you can't invent, from gay badinage with the butler to Benzedrine in the cocktails, from the zebras at Leeds Castle to the Brazilian capybaras that ran wild at Eaton Hall. The Long Weekend deserves to be on every costume drama producer's bookshelf."