Promotional Information

' A fantastically readable and endlessly fascinating book... Delicious, occasionally fantastical, revealing in ways that Downtown Abbey never was.' Rachel Cooke, Observer

A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year

About the Author

Adrian Tinniswood OBE FSA is the author of fifteen books on social and architectural history, including Behind the Throne- A Domestic History of the Royal Household; The Long Weekend- Life in the English Country House Between the Wars, a New York Timesand Sunday Times bestseller; His Invention So Fertile- A Life of Christopher Wren and The Verneys- a True Story of Love, War and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England, which was shortlisted for the BBC/Samuel Johnson Prize. He has worked with a number of heritage organisations including the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Trust, and is currently Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Buckingham and Visiting Fellow in Heritage and History at Bath Spa University.

Reviews

[A] fantastically readable and endlessly fascinating book… Delicious, occasionally fantastical, revealing in ways that Downton Abbey never was. It is as if Tinniswood is at the biggest, wildest, most luxuriantly decadent party ever thrown, and he knows everyone.
*Observer*

Tinniswood and his publishers should be congratulated for issuing this elegant, encyclopedic and entertaining history… We are in the company of a confident and skilled historian who understands the mores of his era and wears his learning lightly… This is a handsomely illustrated pick’n’mix of mansions, manors, castles and palaces…. Tinniswood expands our Sunday evening viewing with the kind of detail you can’t invent… Deserves to be on every costume drama producer’s bookshelf.
*The Times*

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.
*Sunday Times*

Wonderfully opulent, richly textured… The opening chapters of The Long Weekend paint an evocative picture… In telling us how the English country house changed, he is, of course, telling us how England changed too.
*Sunday Telegraph*

[A] masterpiece of social history.
*Daily Mail*

Many of Tinniswood’s anecdotes are extraordinary… Painstakingly researched detail that makes The Long Weekend so entertaining… A rich, multilayered and well-illustrated account of a style of live that disappeared with the Second World War. Lovers of…Brideshead Revisited will relish it.
*Sunday Express*

[A] deliciously jaunty and wonderfully knowledgeable book… Tinniswood displays a terrific insider’s grasp of gossip, while cramming his text with the stories of sport, sex, food, royalty, design, ruination and joy that defined these mansions… Meticulous, irresistible story.
*Spectator*

This delicious book achieves completely what it sets out to do.
*Daily Mail*

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-notch plumbing.
*Financial Times*

Almost indecently enjoyable… Splendidly contrary book… [Tinniswood has a] sharp pen and a squirrel’s eye for detail… Erudite, funny and oddly poignant.
*Literary Review*

A perfect piece of escapism…but also intelligent and scholarly social history.
*Guardian*

Immaculately produced… Tinniswood is a wonderfully clear writer, lively and curious, and with a jaunty point of view.
*Mail on Sunday*

A definitive social history that combines anecdote and narrative with scholarship.
*Daily Telegraph*

A splendidly enjoyable summer-weekend read.
*Tablet*

[It] provides rich detail from all corners, uncovering plenty of angst, but also much optimism.
*The Economist*

Brimming with both architectural detail and social insight… [A] highly enjoyable book… 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…demands.
*Country Life*

Enchanting. However, while poignant, it’s also not without its robust historical points… Beautifully written.
*BBC History Magazine*

[A] Detailed and fascinating study.
*Western Morning News*

[It] promises rich tales of decadence, scandal and extravagant water features.
*Times Literary Supplement*

The rise, fall and transformation of English country houses between the two world wars…has seldom sounded so interesting. Meticulously researched.
*Choice Magazine*

[A} fascinating text… The book is a great read and a window on a lost world.
*Sunday Telegraph*

Beautifully illustrated… [It] overflows with entertaining detail.
*The Times*

Tinniswood uses lively local detail.
*Times Literary Supplement*

[It] 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 complete command of the material.
*London Review of Books*

This is a lively and hugely entertaining history… It’s packed with very funny anecdotes… A delight.
*Mail on Sunday*

Tinniswood paints a vivid portrait of the period
*Catholic Herald*

A detailed and appreciated look at the phenomenon [of country houses]… Tinniswood writes elegantly, in complete charge of his material. The book is a joy to hold in your hand.
*Spears Wealth Management Survey*

Wittily written and beautifully illustrated, Tinniswood’s book recreates a world far more peculiar, but at times rather more enviable, than any fictional version.
*Guardian, Book of the Year*

[A] compelling volume of social history.
*Daily Mail, Book of the Year*

[A] brilliant book about life in the English country house.
*Guardian, Book of the Year*

A scandal-packed glimpse into the glamourous Downton Abbey-esque world of English country houses… ****
*Love it!*