ADRIAN TINNISWOOD

A delightfuljourney through the glamorous story of the English country house party by the bestselling historian. Croquet. Parlour games. Cocktails. Welcome to a glorious journey through the golden age of the country house party - and you are invited. Our host, celebrated historianAdrian Tinniswood, traces the evolution of this quintessentially British pastime from debauched royal tours to the flamboyant excess of the Bright Young Things. With cameos by the Jazz Age industrialist, the bibulous earl and the off-duty politician - whether in moated manor houses or ornate Palladian villas - Tinniswood gives a vivid insight into weekending etiquette and reveals the hidden lives of celebrity guests, from Nancy Astor to Winston Churchill, in all their drinking, feasting, gambling and fornicating. The result is a deliciously entertaining, star-studded, yet surprisingly moving portrait of a time when social conventions were being radically overhauled through the escapism of a generation haunted by war - and a uniquely fast-living period of English history. Praise for The Long Weekend:Delicious, occasionally fantastical, revealing in ways that DowntonAbbey never was. It is as if Tinniswood is at the biggest, wildest, most luxuriantly decadent party ever thrown, and he knows everyone. Observer A deliciously jaunty and wonderfully knowledgeable book. Tinniswood displays a terrific insiders grasp of gossip . A meticulous, irresistible story.Spectator Elegant, encyclopedic and entertaining . A confident and skilled historian who understands the mores of his era and wears his learning lightly . Deserves to be on every costume drama producers bookshelf.Times

Glamour scholarship and superlative storytelling an enthralling read LUCY WORSLEY Adrian Tinniswood opens the doors on the excess intrigue and absurdities of life in the late Victorian and Edwardian country house In the decades before the First World War the owners of the nation s stately homes revelled in a golden age of glory and glamour Nothing lay beyond their reach in a world where privilege and hedonism went hand in hand with duty and honour This was a time when the ancestral seats of ancient nobility stood side by side with the fabulous palaces of Jewish bankers and Indian princes when dukes and duchesses mixed with aristocratic society hostesses who had learned to dance in the chorus line and self made millionaires who had been raised in the slums of Manchester and Birmingham The Power and the Glory explores the country house during this golden age when Britain ruled over a quarter of the world s population when its stately homes were at their most opulent and when for the privileged few life in the country house was the best life of all A wonderful book JUDITH FLANDERS Scintillating and brilliant from a master of the subject GARETH RUSSELL

A masterpiece of social history' Daily MailThere 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.