PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Adrian Tinniswood is professorial research fellow in history at the University of Buckingham, adjunct professor of history at Maynooth University and the author of many books on British history, including Behind the Throne and the Sunday Times bestseller The Long Weekend. He was awarded an OBE for services to heritage, and lives in the west of Ireland.
[A] preposterously entertaining history of the postwar country house... reading it is rather like leafing through an old leather-bound Smythson address book whose well-connected owner has helpfully added waspish notes, gossip and the odd family tree. In other words, it's heaven. -- Rachel Cooke * Observer * Adrian Tinniswood's rollicking study perfectly captures the combination of decadence, pathos and brazen cheek that kept the English country house alive when it faced disaster. -- John Walsh * Sunday Times * [A] brilliant new history of the country house since 1945... Tinniswood tells...[the] story superbly, his racy anecdotes mined not just from the usual memoirs, but from a studious trawl of endless local papers. -- Marcus Binney * Daily Telegraph * Beautifully orchestrated... a compulsive read, deliciously voyeuristic and yet a triumph of meticulous social and cultural scholarship. * Country Life * A vastly entertaining account of the crisis that befell England's stately homes in the decades immediately after the war. -- Simon Heffer * Daily Telegraph, *Books of the Year* *
