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The Power and the Glory

The Country House Before the Great War

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The Power and the Glory

By: Adrian Tinniswood
Narrated by: Matthew Spencer
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Adrian Tinniswood opens the doors on the excess, intrigue and absurdities of life in the late Victorian and Edwardian country house

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. Nothing lay beyond their reach in a world where privilege and hedonism went hand-in-hand with duty and honour.

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 aristocratic society hostesses who had learned to dance in the chorus line and self-made millionaires who had been raised in the slums of Manchester and Birmingham.

The Power and the Glory explores the country house during this golden age, when Britain ruled over a quarter of the world’s population, when its stately homes were at their most opulent and when, for the privileged few, life in the country house was the best life of all.

'Glamour, scholarship and superlative storytelling [...] an enthralling read.'
LUCY WORSLEY

'A wonderful book.'
JUDITH FLANDERS

'Scintillating and brilliant, from a master of the subject.'
GARETH RUSSELL

©2024 Adrian Tinniswood (P)2024 Penguin Audio Architecture Europe Great Britain Home Design & Renovation House & Home Rural Social Classes & Economic Disparity Sociology Inspiring Royalty

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All stars
Most relevant  
For me, the double volume social history of the country house is riveting. Not only are these works also social geographies, they help to explain the almost complete change in the class-based use of space. In addition, they explain why some of the remaining edifices are now grand hotels or golf clubs and leisure centres. I was sad and regretful over the vanishing villages and vanishing or ruined and remaining homes that are now either museums or abandoned, like some Jacobean houses in central England. Above all, the changes in garden design, especially under Gertrude Jekyll and Edward Lutyens, is fascinating. I recommend both volumes highly. Dr Jane Starfield

Adrian Tinniswood, The Power and the Glory

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A very interesting book, I thoroughly enjoyed it . I would recommend it. I will listen to it again.

The history

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One that repeats the habit of presenting the book as a list of events, dates and people. The problem is that the author understands nothing about architecture, styles and cultural connections of the time. And this is as obvious as it is embarrassing.

A historian cannot be insulated. In other words: a historian who only understands the process of archiving facts is not a historian; he is simply an archive worker.

So my rating for the book is 2 stars.

Livro medíocre.

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Writer has fallen into the British hating and woke mindset. On top of which there is a narrator who manages to mispronounce one place after another in Britain. The book just rambles from one point to another and is written by someone who clearly has no pride in Britain and the country’s achievements. Intellectually stunted and very depressing - a book best avoided.

Anti-British and Mispronunciations

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