Publication Date: 05/10/2023 ISBN: 9781529111439 Category:

Noble Ambitions

Adrian Tinniswood

Publisher: Vintage Publishing
Publication Date: 05/10/2023 ISBN: 9781529111439 Category:
Paperback / Softback

£12.99

Become the envy of all book lovers with your own Mr B’s sticker to show off where you do your shopping.

Quantity:

Description

From the bestselling author of The Long Weekend: a wild, sad and sometimes hilarious tour of the English country house after the Second World War, when Swinging London collided with aristocratic values.

‘Preposterously entertaining’ Observer
‘Brilliant’ Daily Telegraph
‘Rollicking’ Sunday Times

As the sun set slowly on the British Empire in the years after the Second World War, the nation’s stately homes were in crisis. Tottering under the weight of rising taxes and a growing sense that they had no place in twentieth-century Britain, hundreds of ancestral piles were dismantled and demolished.

Yet – perhaps surprisingly – many of these great houses survived, as dukes and duchesses clung desperately to their ancestral seats and tenants’ balls gave way to rock concerts, safari parks and day trippers. From the Rolling Stones rocking Longleat to Christine Keeler rocking Cliveden, Noble Ambitions takes us on a lively tour of these crumbling halls of power.

* A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year *
* Longlisted for the William MB Berger Prize for British Art History *

Publisher Review

[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* *

Book experts at your service

What are you looking for?

A recommendation
Something specific
  • Mr B's Recommendation Station
  • Fill in the three questions below, along with your name and email address, and our book experts will be in touch soon with their personal recommendations

  • I'm after something specific
  • Tell us about the book, author or subject you're looking for, along with your name and email address and our book experts will be in touch as soon as possible