Historic Houses Books of the Month

At just over 100 pages long, and set over the course of a single afternoon, on Mothering Sunday of 1924. Swift captures the moment that life in the country house was really undergoing a big change in post-war Britain – a time when women began to think about careers beyond domestic service, when many young men had died during the Great War, and seismic societal shifts were beginning to be felt by all classes.

Despite being a short story, Mothering Sunday raises some big questions, and will stay with you long after you’ve finished the final sentence.

Ireland has a very different relationship with the country house to Britain: visitors to the Republic of Ireland today are more likely to come across burnt out shells than living, breathing stately homes and country houses. Terence Dooley dives into Ireland’s complex relationship with the country house, which climaxed with the destruction of over 300 of Ireland’s ‘big houses’ during the Irish Revolutionary War in this nuanced, readable study.

The Historic Houses Association was created in 1973, born in part from the deluge of post-war demolition and destruction of country houses to the threat of a wealth tax. And it is here that the book begins, before journeying through the ways the country house, and its resourceful owners, has found to adapt and remain relevant in the past 50 years. Ben’s book is full of fascinating examples and anecdotes, as well as a sobering reminder of the delicate fiscal and regulatory framework which underpins the country house’s revival and success.

Historic Houses readers can take advantage of a special price of £30 when ordering the book directly from the publisher (boydellandbrewer.com), using the code BB243 at checkout.

Molly Keane’s Booker-nominated Good Behaviour charts the fading Anglo-Irish aristocratic St Charles family at their ancestral home, Temple Alice. Part satire, part tragedy, part devastating class critique from someone who knew the world she was writing about intimately, Good Behaviour is a wickedly funny (what other novel opens with the narrator killing her elderly mother with rabbit mousse?) tour-de-force of country house fiction which has long been overlooked. An essential piece of summer reading.

The outbreak of war in 1939 affected every aspect of British life. Late in the summer of 1939, archives and artworks from London’s great national museums, galleries, and libraries began to be evacuated. Where to store the priceless treasures and records of a nation? Anywhere from caves and quarries to stately homes and pretty much everything in between. Caroline Shenton’s fascinating, meticulously researched account of Britain’s unsung heroes, who oversaw the evacuation and care of some of the most important collections in our history, is well worth reading. The secret life of stately homes during the Second World War never ceases to amaze and intrigue. 

Owning a country house isn’t for the faint-hearted. Set in 1945, Lissa Evans’ new novel centres around Dimperley Manor, a vast, ramshackle country house that has had a tough war, and its owners have fared little better. Is there a place for Dimperley in the brave new world that has emerged from war? Can the Vere-Thissett family accept change, think up a way of making ends meet and save their much-loved home from falling into ruin? A funny, heart-warming novel about love, loss, and evolving with the times. 

Adrian Tinniswood’s latest book is a brilliant exploration of the late nineteenth century/early twentieth century country house – and its owners. Explored thematically, Tinniswood shows the rapid changes aristocratic society was going through. From new money building fantastical new houses and technological innovation revolutionising the place of the country house in fashionable society to the obligatory entertaining of royalty and the old guard struggling to accept a new societal order, it’s a riot of a read. 

The era of the Dollar Brides – American heiresses who married into British aristocracy – is one of the most glamorous in country house fiction. Vanessa Beaumont spins a riveting tale of Jean Buckman, an American heiress who marries English aristocrat Edward Warre, owner of Harehope House, and the subsequent battleground of their marriage, marked by betrayal, repression, and the pressure of maintaining and managing a crumbling historic house. Beaumont herself is chatelaine of Bywell Hall, in Northumberland – which, we hasten to add, is definitely not anything like Harehope!

A little-known, but well worth reading Booker shortlisted novel, Caroline Blackwood’s Great Granny Webster is a story broken into four parts, tracing the Webster family over four generations, from their crumbling Ulster big house, Dunmartin Hall, to London and then the Hove seafront. It’s hard to escape the fact that the novel is semi-autobiographical (Blackwood grew up at Clandeboye, in Northern Ireland), but that makes it all the more emotive. Perfect for curling up in front of a fire with on a dark winter’s evening.

It’s the summer of 1969 and Lyntons, a dilapidated country house, has been bought by a wealthy American. Frances, Cara, and Peter have all been sent there to write up reports and surveys of the house, its contents, and the garden. Left to their own devices in the sultry, stifling summer heat, their lives become intertangled in ways they could never have imagined. Bitter Orange is the kind of novel you’ll struggle to put down: plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing until the very end.