The Long Week-End: A Social History Of Great Britian 1918-1939

Rating:
Summary: Revisit Britain's "Long week-End"
Review: "The Long Week-End" by novelist Robert Graves (author of the equally 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.

Rating:
Summary: England between the wars.
Review: _The Long Weekend_ is (as the title says) a social history of Great Britain between the two wars. It was originally published in 1941 and was co-authored (as is often forgotten) by Alan Hodge.

The book isn't written using a strictly structured or academic style (at least not one clear to this reader) but moves smoothly and in a conversational way between subjects and ideas. It takes that conversation from Armistice in 1918 to the declaration of war against Germany in 1939. The chapters cover subjects as diverse as Revolutionary ideas, Amusements, Domestic life, trends in art and literature, political life, and the Loch Ness monster.

One of the nicer things about this book is the vividness of the detail which Graves and Hodge bring to their subjects. When they write about the night clubs of the 1920s, they bring them to life almost better than the novelists who wrote about the same period. The book is a treasure trove for trivia buffs, armchair historians, or people looking for background color from the period.

That said, it's a long book for such a specific period of British history. While I really enjoyed the read I didn't need so much specific information and there were times when I found myself struggling to keep interest. That's not a reflection on the quality of the book, however, more the needs that I brought to it and shouldn't discourage the potential reader.