LONG WEEKEND: LIFE/ ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE BETWEEN/ WARS (PB)

A new edition of the fascinating social history which ventures behind closed doors to uncover the secrets of life in the interwar country house in England. During the 1920s and 1930s, as the sun set slowly on the British Empire, England's stately homes concealed worlds both opulent and ordinary, noble and vicious. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, on unpublished letters and diaries, on the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls, unhappy heiresses and bullying butlers, it reveals how the image of the country house was carefully protected by its occupants above and below stairs, and how the reality was so much more interesting than the dream.