Synopses & Reviews
Review
"For 500 years, English upper-class domestic architecture has symbolized and incarnated a way of life, each changing to accommodate the other. Social and sexual mores quickly find their architectural expression, as do political and even literary principles. Girouard traces as well the architectural effects of changes in family structure, from the tightly knit medieval household through 17-century interest in privacy and division. His book is magnificently illustrated, his text an engaging weave of all kinds of history." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
This best-selling book is a beautifully illustrated history of the English country house from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. In it, renowned architectural historian Mark Girouard presents a rare and revealing glimpse of the English upper classes--their public and personal lives, their servants, and their homes.
"A deeply important book, one of the most interesting contributions to architectural history."--J. H. Plumb,
The New York Review of Books
"A survey of country houses through the past five centuries, from a broad range of materials: family archives, literature, plans and photographs.... The book itself is a physical artifact of surpassing beauty which could fit on the grandest table in the houses it describes."--David Hackett Fischer,
The New Republic
"Informative, balanced, knowledgeable, and witty."--
The New Yorker
"This enthralling and immensely informative book...tells with wit, scholarship, and lucidity how the country house evolved to meet the needs and reflect the social attitudes of the times."--Philip Ziegler,
The Times
"One of those very useful and very enjoyable books that the learned can seldom write, and the entertaining seldom achieve--clear, detailed, and witty."--Angus Wilson,
The Observer
Winner of the 1978 Duff Cooper Memorial Prize and the W. H. Smith & Son Annual Literary Award for 1979.