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The Long Weekend: Social History of Great Britain, 1918-39
 
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The Long Weekend: Social History of Great Britain, 1918-39 (Paperback)

by Robert Graves (Author), Alan Hodge (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 472 pages
  • Publisher: Abacus; New edition edition (2 Nov 1995)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0349107335
  • ISBN-13: 978-0349107332
  • Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.9 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,118,517 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #67 in  Books > Fiction > 20th Century Classics > Graves, Robert

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Product Description

Product Description

First published in 1940, this survey of the inter-war period not only includes surface aspects of the era - from plays and novels to dance fads and fashions - but also discusses the international influences at work in politics, science, business and religion. Short hair and shorter skirts arrived during the 1920s; "New Education" became a going concern; the British Labour Party became respectable at last; and, as the 1930s wore on, public acknowledgement of the possibility of another world war was feverishly avoided in an ever-increasing whirl of activities.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Revisting Britain's "long week-end", 9 Dec 2002
By Tom Holmberg "tholmberg" (Hoffman Ests., IL USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Long Weekend: Social History of Great Britain, 1918-39 (Paperback)
"The Long Week-End" by novelist Robert Graves (author of the highly recommended memoir of WWI, "Goodbye to All That") and journalist Alan Hodge (with uncreditted research assistance by Karl Goldschmidt) is a kaleidoscopic survey of British life between the wars. First published in 1940, this highly readable, impressionistic history of the interwar years is based primarily on newspaper accounts and personal memoirs from the time. Arranged in chapters covering a range of topics making up modern life, from "Reading Matter" to "Sex", from "Post-War Politics" to "The Depression," Graves and Hodge capture the spirit of a time frozen between the two great disasters of the twentieth century.

As a social history, "The Long Week-End" dwells more on matters of manners and daily living; matters of more interest than of "historic" note, such as the rise and fall of Eurythmics, Golfinia McIntoshii, the Lookatmeter, Mr. Grindell-Matthews' death ray, and Colonel Barker the transvestite English fascist. If you want to learn about the significance of the Rapallo Agreement or the Stresa Conference you should probably look elsewhere. Here you can read about M'Intosh and Parer's almost forgotten flight from England to Australia in a broken-down WWI bomber bought for a few pounds. Or of Horatio Bottomley, who grew rich through successful, but crooked, lottery schemes and then lost it all. You'll learn more about the Archdeacon Wakeford case than the Four-Power Pact.

Reading the book brought up parallels to modern times, showing that the more things change the more they stay the same. Moralists attacked the immorality of the times, popular music, books and movies were blamed for the lowering of the standards of decency and culture, the older generation decried the lax mores of the young, the high brows decried the intrusion of American low-brow culture, etc.

"The Long Week-End" is written in a mock serious tone of an anthropologist describing the strange customs of some lost Amazonian tribe. "The Twenties did indeed,: the authors quip, "temporarily raise the mental age of the average theatre-goer from fourteen to seventeen." "...the early film-star," they observe, "usually grimaced at his audience like someone trying to convey news of terrific importance to a stone-deaf and half-witted child."

Graves, who originally thought "lull" (as in "lull between the wars") should be in the title, had entered into writing the book, in part, to provide some financial assistance to his friend Alan Hodge. Graves collaborated with Hodge in the same year on "The Reader Over Your Shoulder," a manual of style. The book benefits from a judicious use of quotes from newspapers. The "Authors' Note" lists a number of topics skipped over, leaving me wanting to know more about the Mannin Beg steeplechase for racing cars. The book reminds me of Otto Friedrich's book on Berlin in the 1920s, "Before the Deluge," which readers might want to also search out.

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