The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home

by Peter Mandler

This pathbreaking account of England`s stately homes over the past two centuries reveals much about the relationship of the nation to its past and its aristocracy. Mandler melds social, cultural, artistic, and political perspectives to show how attitudes toward the great country houses have veered from selective appreciation to outright hostility and only recently to thoroughgoing admiration.

Genres: History

536 pages, Hardcover

First published May 29, 1997

Reviews

[C. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A formidable piece of scholarship. Although this is probably more detailed than it needs to be for those reading for pleasure, the power of Mandler's insights shine through. Essentially, he argues that there is no continuous, unchanging tradition of the English country house. There have been a plethora of feelings towards them over the past 220 years, and it's really only in the past 70 that they have been so stripped of their power to intimidate that a cult of an 'English tradition' has been allowed to emerge.

Mandler is excellent at picking apart fashions across time and class, arguing (for example) that popular feelings for the houses of 'the Olden Time' were strong in the mid-Victorian era, while only elite feelings were strong for them in the interwar period. At the same time, it was only in the 1930s that eighteenth-century houses saw a revival of interest — but these are just a few of many illuminations which arise from Mandler's immersion in his sources. This book is fantastically incisive!