There is nothing quite as beautiful as an English country house in summer. And there has never been a summer quite like that Indian summer between the two world wars, a period of gentle decline in which the sun set slowly on the British Empire and the shadows lengthened on the lawns of a thousand stately homes. Real life in the country house during the 1920s and 1930s was not always so sunny. By turns opulent and ordinary, noble and vicious, its shadows were darker. In The Long Weekend, Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the truth about a world half-forgotten, draped in myth and hidden behind stiff upper lips and film-star smiles. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, on unpublished letters and diaries, on the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls and unhappy heiresses and bullying butlers, The Long Weekend gives a voice to the people who inhabited this world and shows 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.

A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro’s beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House. In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the countryside and into his past.

A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House. . .In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the countryside and into his past. .

A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House. . .In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the countryside and into his past. .

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the English countryside and into his past . . . A haunting tale of lost causes and lost love, The Remains of the Day, winner of the Booker Prize, contains Ishiguro's now celebrated evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House - within its walls can be heard ever more distinct echoes of the violent upheavals spreading across Europe.

This is the first book of the famous trilogy of English country life, The Brensham Trilogy, by John Moore. A wonderful and exuberant chronicle of an English market town between the wars, distinguished with a historic abbey, a winding river and bustling pubs with a cast of characters that could have stepped out of Hogarth or Shakespeare...

Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882—1941) was an English writer and literary critic, the leading figure of the modernist literature of the first half of the twentieth century. She also was part of a group of English intellectuals, writers, and artists, graduates of Cambridge, called the Bloomsbury group. The story of the novel "Between the Acts" takes place in an English country house right before the Second World War, in the day of the pageant, the annual celebration of English history attended by the local community. It tells the story of the Oliver family, their hopes, worries, desires, and serves as a moving valedictory, as it is the last thing that Virginia Woolf ever wrote.

Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an English writer and literary critic, the leading figure of the modernist literature of the first half of the twentieth century. She also was part of a group of English intellectuals, writers, and artists, graduates of Cambridge, called the Bloomsbury group. The story of the novel "Between the Acts" takes place in an English country house right before the Second World War, in the day of the pageant, the annual celebration of English history attended by the local community. It tells the story of the Oliver family, their hopes, worries, desires, and serves as a moving valedictory, as it is the last thing that Virginia Woolf ever wrote.

Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882—1941) was an English writer and literary critic, the leading figure of the modernist literature of the first half of the twentieth century. She also was part of a group of English intellectuals, writers, and artists, graduates of Cambridge, called the Bloomsbury group. The story of the novel "Between the Acts" takes place in an English country house right before the Second World War, in the day of the pageant, the annual celebration of English history attended by the local community. It tells the story of the Oliver family, their hopes, worries, desires, and serves as a moving valedictory, as it is the last thing that Virginia Woolf ever wrote.

First published in 1946, following on from Portrait of Elmbury, the second in the series shows an England which now seems almost foreign in its remoteness. Evoked with an unerringly accurate eye, Brensham Village contains a mixture of action and character, conveying the life of a country community in the halcyon period between the wars. Sentimental it is, but not so as to undermine the picture of a time when a life of landed gentry, squalid poverty and routine village intimacy co-existed within a familiar seasonal routine.

Lessons is the third novel in Jenny Colgan's beloved Maggie Adair series. As the summer holidays start, scandal hits Downey House. The attraction between Maggie Adair, the fiery, committed English teacher at Downey House and David McDonald, a teacher at the local boys' school, has escalated - and now both are facing an uncertain future. The girls of Downey House - mercurial Fliss, glamorous Alice and shy, dependable Simone - are facing long summers at home. But the new term is not far away - and it will bring new pupils and lots of fresh new challenges . . .

In the library of a country house in Nottinghamshire, Vivian is writing an article about the importance of lying, when he is interrupted by Cyril, who tries to tempt him away, but instead is drawn into a discussion about art, nature, literature and imagination. The Decay of Lying sees Wilde explore his deepest preoccupations about the relationship between life and art, and examine the work of such writers as Shakespeare and Balzac.

Genteel life at 'the 'Big House' continues while the Irish War of Independence rages beyond the gates, but for how long? Read Elizabeth Bowen's accessible feminist take on the Irish aristocracy With an introduction by Victoria Glendinning The Irish troubles rage, but up at the 'Big House', tennis parties, dances and flirtations with the English officers continue, undisturbed by the ambushes, arrests and burning country beyond the gates. Faint vibrations of discord reach the young girl Lois, who is straining for her own freedom, and she will witness the troubles surge closer and reach their irrevocable, inevitable climax.

We have lived in villages a long time. The village was the first model for communal living. Towns came much later, then cities. Later still came suburbs, neighbourhoods, townships, communes, kibbutzes. But the village has endured. Across England, modernity creeps up to the boundaries of many, breaking the connection the village has with the land. With others, they can be as quiet as the graveyard as their housing is bought up by city 'weekenders', or commuters. The ideal chocolate box image many holidaying to our Sceptred Isle have in their minds eye may be true in some cases, but across the country the heartbeat of the real English village is still beating strongly - if you can find it. To this mission our intrepid historian and travel writer Tom Fort willingly gets on his trusty bicycle and covers the length and breadth of England to discover the essence of village life. His journeys will travel over six thousand years of communal existence for the peoples that eventually became the English. Littered between the historical analysis, are personal memories from Tom of the village life he remembers and enjoys today in rural Oxfordshire.

Weekend Wodehouse -- required reading at country house parties in the late Thirties -- remains one of the best introductions to the work of PG Wodehouse. All the favourites are here: Drones Club stories, Mr Mullinger stories, stories of Jeeves, Lord Amsworth and Ukridge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Weekend Wodehouse -- required reading at country house parties in the late Thirties -- remains one of the best introductions to the work of PG Wodehouse. All the favourites are here: Drones Club stories, Mr Mullinger stories, stories of Jeeves, Lord Amsworth and Ukridge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .