The Power and the Glory: The Country House Before the Great War

'A whirling, waltzing panorama through the last carefree age of British nobility’ New Statesman In the decades before the First World War, the owners of the nation’s stately homes revelled in a golden age of glory and glamour. This was a time when the ancestral seats of ancient nobility stood side by side with the fabulous palaces of Jewish bankers and Indian princes, when dukes and duchesses mixed with self-made millionaires and society hostesses who had learned to dance in the chorus line. Adrian Tinniswood opens the doors to the country house during this glittering golden age, when – for the privileged few – life in the country house was the best life of all. ‘Scintillating and brilliant, from a master of the subject’ Gareth Russell ‘Shot through with Tinniswood’s signature sardonic wit and delicious one-liners... The range and scop of his book is breathtaking’ Country Life