Sunday Best: Travels Through the Day of Rest

by Daniel Gray

What if every day was like Sunday?

Closed shops and roast dinners. Bulky newspapers and the hum of lawnmowers. Strolls to nowhere in particular and visiting snoozing grandparents. Television theme tunes cueing bath time and a sudden dread of the looming week ahead…

Through an assortment of rituals and activities, Sundays came to be the unique day in our week – whether tedious, pleasant or somewhere in-between. But how did they change over time? Has anything interesting ever happened on a Sunday? Have we forgotten how to do Sunday? And, in our rushed modern lives, should we now try to recapture that distinctive, unhurried Sunday feel?

Offering answers to those questions and more through a mix of travelogue and social history, A Month of Sundays entertainingly charts the story of what author Daniel Gray argues is the People’s Day. Told through Sundays whiled away in places from the Hebrides to Hyde Park – via Sunderland, Scarborough, Liverpool and beyond – Gray’s latest book is a charming journey in time and place. A Month of Sundays offers nostalgia, people’s history and affectionate, absorbing writing – a book drenched in the scent of gravy and summoning the faint sound of church bells.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, History

205 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 10, 2025

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book looking at sunday the day of rest how things have changed over the years

[Joanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love Daniel Gray’s writing which is always sharply observed with gentle humour throughout. This book of short essays takes you round various parts of Britain exploring Sunday traditions past and present, with the author’s writing drawing you in so you feel like you are observing the happenings along with him. Having attended a few events for his earlier books, I read this with the author’s voice firmly in my head.

There are so many interesting snippets of information about various aspects of British life which have become – or perhaps were – synonymous with Sundays. Church services, Sunday papers, closed shops, car boot sales, Sunday lunches and so much more are included within this book. I didn’t know that original Sunday Schools, although set up by churches in the late 18th century, were literally schools with the aim of teaching children to read and write. Unlike traditional schools where fees would be due, these schools were free to attend.

I was also fascinated to learn about the mass trespass at Kinder Scout in the Peak District 1932. More than 400 ramblers were protesting about restrictions on where they could walk with so many areas in private ownership. This is considered a crucial moment in improving access to the English countryside. (Rules are more relaxed here in Scotland.) One of the protesters was none other than songwriter Ewan McColl, who in the same year wrote the song The Manchester Rambler about being ‘a wage slave on Monday but a free man on Sunday’.

Sunday was such an important day for workers and they wanted freedom to be able to enjoy it. The Lord’s Day Observation Society seemed determined to limit that enjoyment and gets several mentions seeming to spend all their time being outraged at people playing or watching sport, enjoying any form of entertainment, shopping or drinking.

If there’s a smell that sums up Sunday, surely it’s a roast and gravy? There was a particularly amusing part where the author takes his daughter to a Toby carvery and is surprised and delighted to find she seems enthralled listening to him tell her about the history of Sunday roasts. Or is she… ? On encountering the Just Eat courier loading up a Sunday roast to deliver on his bike, the author muses that his Grandma could have made a fortune dispatching his younger self on his BMX delivering her Sunday roasts!

I particularly related to the aptly named coda section at the end of the book where the author recalls his older sisters taping the Top 40 off the radio, fingers poised over the tape deck to stop recording as soon as the DJ started talking. I did the same, although being a few years older than Mr Gray, it was Tommy Vance and Richard Skinner for me! Other sounds of Sundays might include familiar tv theme tunes such as Last of the Summer Wine, Songs of Praise or The Antiques Roadshow. I’m fairly sure that All Creatures Great and Small with its iconic theme tune was also on on Sunday evenings. It certainly has a Sunday evening feel to it in my memory. One of my favourite chapters was the chapter TV Times which talks about many of these shows and others which will bring back memories.

Sunday Best is an affectionate tribute to British Sundays in years gone by and in the present day. Sunday Best explores the social history of Sundays in this nostalgic, witty and warm read.

[Katrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining slice of social history focusing on UK Sunday customs and how they’ve changed over the years. This talented writer is a great observer of the small details of life.

[Wendy Storey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this fascinating insight into Sunday traditions and changes in Sundays over time.

[Ipswichblade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daniel Gray writes excellent books and this is no exception, he clearly had similar boring Sundays as me in his childhood

[Joe O'Donnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderfully elegant and observant writer Daniel Gray is, with an consummate ability to find poetry in the most pedestrian and humdrum of customs or activities. There might be those of you who dread Sundays – perhaps having found yourself suspended between cloying boredom and ‘The Fear’ during them – reduced to rictus terror by the sound of the opening to ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ (or, in the case of my Irish childhood, the ‘Glenroe’ theme tune). But even if you subscribe to Alan Partridge’s view of this day of the week as representing “Sunday, Bloody Sunday!”, you cannot but be charmed by Daniel Gray’s celebration of the sabbath in “Sunday Best”.

Through travelling the length of Britain, Daniel Gray studies the rituals and characteristics of a British Sunday, taking in customs varying from car boot sales, traditional Sunday schools, Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park, and greyhound racing. Gray also recounts the radical history of the seventh day of the week – of ‘how Sunday was won’ – from the battle between chartist reformers against puritanical Sabbatarians over Sunday leisure and opening hours, and the Kinder Scout mass trespass in the Peak District in 1932. Whether discussing playgrounds padlocked due to overzealous religious observance or describing “the mesmeric perfume” of a Sunday roast, Daniel Gray has sketched a brilliantly evocative tribute to this day of the week that “in a world ablaze with flickering screens and polluted by sound … offers license to be quiet, to think, to do as little or as much as you like”.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inspired by the boredom of lock down, and the memory of Sundays from his childhood, Gray explores the British history of Sunday laws and traditions.

Why I started this book: Added it to my collection of Sabbath books, and started it because of the cover.

Why I finished it: I was thrilled and surprised to learn so much about the British Sunday vs Continental Sunday traditions... and it helped explain some of my own family traditions as my Grandpa and his family did a sabbatical in England during the 60s. Example: Staying at home, Sunday roast, time with Dad, and assurity that doing more will bring the punishment of God.

[Nick Harland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great book from a great writer.

[Shriyukta · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is written well. I couldn’t identify with the history of Sunday as in the imperial world.