The Long Week-End
{{Short description|1940 book by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge}}
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{{Infobox book
| name = The Long Week-End
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| image = File:The Long Week-End.jpg
| caption = First edition
| author = Robert Graves, Alan Hodge
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| country = United Kingdom
| language = English
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| genre = Social history
| publisher = Faber & Faber
| release_date = 1940
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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.
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.John Lucas, The Radical Twenties: Aspects of Writing, Politics and Culture. Nottingham: Five Leaves, 1997. {{ISBN|0907123171}} (pp. 123-25)
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.{{cite book |last=Tinniswood |first=Adrian |author-link=Adrian Tinniswood |date=2016 |title=The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9kcyCwAAQBAJ&dq=%22adrian+tinniswood%22+%22robert+graves%22&pg=PP10 |location=London |publisher=Jonathan Cape |page=ix |isbn=9780224099455 |access-date=24 February 2021 }}
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."{{cite journal|author= Clark, William D. |title=The Long Week End. A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-1939 |journal=Journal of Modern History |volume=13 |issue=4 |pages=563 |date=December 1941|doi=10.1086/236582 }} 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."{{cite journal|title=The Long Week End. A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-1939 |newspaper=Kirkus Reviews|date=June 15, 1941|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/robert-graves2/the-long-week-end/|access-date=19 July 2017}}
References
{{Reflist}}
{{Robert Graves}}
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Category:1940 non-fiction books
Category:20th-century history books
Category:Books by Robert Graves
Category:History books about the 20th century
Category:Social history of the United Kingdom