Book Description
This book examines Nancy's contribution to the arts of interior decoration and garden design by chronicling her own homes and gardens. These are Mirador, a Virginian country house, etc.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent read.......2007-06-27
I truly enjoyed this book. The pictures were excellent quality and representative of the text. For the professional decorator or a person interested in house decoration it is funny and informative. I highly recommend this book.
Nancy Lancaster:English County House Style.......2007-02-09
Book was not what I expected. Book was recommended by a decorator who said Nancy Lancaster was her inspiration so I was expecting more decorating and less biography-like book. It does make an excellent coffee table presentation!!
A classic tale of high style.......2007-01-18
This book is sumptuous and entertaining. Martin Wood weaves a fascinating story of the founder of English County House Style. If you love biography, decorating, and history along with beautiful photographs, renderings, and paintings of exquisitely decorated rooms, this book will fit the bill! A lavish feast for sight and soul.
United States to Great Britain: Shared Style.......2006-08-30
This book takes the reader from the style of America in the early years of the 20th century to the life she created in Britain. Many aspects of style were shared in the two countries, but many are unique to each. It is interesting how Nancy Lancaster blended the two worlds into a grand country style that was appreciated by both. Her childhood home in Virginia was her inspiration throughout her life and helped set the style she was so well known for.
Adrift in the Cozy, Comfortable, Tasteful English Tradition!.......2006-04-10
Martin Wood is an excellent biographer and chronicler of style and in this richly illustrated monograph on Nancy Lancaster he makes use of his own credentials as a garden designer and interior designer to praise the virtues of a lady few of us know.
Nancy Lancaster gained her reputation as a gardener and designer of gardens whose only clear rival has been Gertrude Jekyll. But Martin Wood increases her stature by naming her the creator of the English country house style. His writing style is fluid, humorous, tender and informative, giving all the biographical data about Lancaster's heritage, youth, and life in a manner that makes what seems to be a picture essay become a page-turner novel!
Lancaster devoted herself to recreating the English Country atmosphere, though she was a born and bred American. Her own various homes as well as those of people who engaged her expertise demonstrate how even the most modest dwelling can breed the charm of the English Country house. Her gardens are like dream sequences out of Arthur Rackham and her taste in balancing room space with the gracious furniture and window treatments and light is impeccable. The Book is filled with some very lush photography that takes the time to scrutinize her concepts as well as pleasure the eye over her accomplishments. This is far more than a design book. This is a book about a life and how it extended into creating a personal world of quiet dignity and beauty. Grady Harp, April 06
Book Description
The English House is a vivid photographic tour of the private homes and lifestyles of the storied English countryside that offers England's rich span of architectural and interior styles as wonderfully inspiring and intiguing examples of current influential decorating trends. Whether a charming and humble cottage or a grand Georgian and Palladian manor house, all the homes featured in this stunning book illustrate the epitome of styles that define the English house.
The delightful text details each house's quirks while highlighting the decorating approaches and design ideas-startling juxtapositions, new takes on tradition, witty visual puns, and bold new combinations. This is an ideal book for any anglophile and is equally appealing to anyone with an interest in interior decoration, with many design ideas that easily translate into interiors on either side of the Atlantic.
Sally Griffiths started writing after her own home was featured in British House & Garden 20 years ago. She runs a photo library called Red Cover and is the author of The English Country Cottage.
Customer Reviews:
The Archaeology of the British.......2006-01-14
This book is brilliant. It reminded me of a paleontology book where the author looks at the shells of ancient marine fossils and reconstructs their lives from the shape of the shells.
From the structure of the English Country House Girouard recreates the lives of those who lived in them. Not just the Lord and Lady but all those who lived and worked there. How many people were in this room during dinner? How did the food get to the dining area (usually a long trek. This minimized the chance the kitchen would burn the place down but mimimized the chance dinner hadn't congealed). How many people (ladies in waiting, servants, servants of servants) were sleeping in the room together in 1500, 1700 or 1890? The idea that one would actually have any privacy is a very recent concept.
A fascinating reconstruction of what life was like not just for the head of the household, but for all who lived on the estate.
Very informative.......2002-02-19
Don't be put off at first by the black and white photos. This book has some color photos, and I was at first hesitant to purchase this book because it seemed to be mostly black and white photography.
However, once I began to read this book, all thoughts about photos went out of my head! This book is informative, intelligent and thorough. The author has studied his subject very well, and writes in a clear and easy to follow manner. I really do find the floorplans to be an invaluable tool towards understanding the buildings the author is describing.
I am currently using this book as a research tool for my novel, but I did buy this book just for the love of the subject and I was not disappointed.
I would recommend this book again and again to anyone with a love of history and architecture.
This will become a fixture on your nightstand.......2001-05-13
Mark Girouard, an architectural historian, has traced the roles of form and function in England's Great Houses in this densely illustrated, sensitively written book. Floor-plans, innumerable photographs and drawings (many of homes now destroyed), and portraits pepper the text, which is readability itself.
The book follows a chronological path from the Mediaval Household to the present day. The text isn't dry at all. Delicious details abound: Bess of Hardwick pacing her Great Chamber of Hardwick Hall, waiting for the royal visit that never came in the instantly-dated house she'd built for this very purpose, ... The origin of the phrase "backstairs intrigues" (both political and sexual).... the slow but persistant birth of the aristocratic ideal of "privacy"--and how it affected dining halls....the rise of the great dilettante libraries (and the rooms to house them).....and the advent of the freakish innovation of indoor plumbing (and a picture of the Duke of Wellington's elaborate WC) are just a few tidbits.
Mr. Girouard doesn't neglect the "downstairs" portion of a Great House, because he's interested in the whole institution as a functioning unit. Some of the most intriguing photos are of beloved servants' portraits, and the almost Shaker-like beauty of a working kitchen or laundry. Included, also, is a printed "Summary of Livery Men's Duties, Etc., Etc.", of Hatfield House, and darned if it doesn't sound like instructions for empoyees at an indifferent New York hotel!
This book is a delicious retrospective, and will make any red-blooded Anglophile who longs for one of these faded leviathans very happy indeed. Now, if you need me further, I will be in the Orangery.
Average customer rating:
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English Manor Houses (Country Series)
Nicholas Cooper
Manufacturer: George Weidenfeld & Nicholson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 General
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ASIN: 0297831062 |
Book Description
Published in memory of the architectural historian John Cornforth, these great house inventories, document the taste and lifestyle of leading aristocratic patrons and the households that supported them.
Book Description
The English are geniuses at mixing practicality with beauty, as this rich visual anthology of handsome cottages proves. Trace the evolution of these charming homes, from early railway cottages and "improvised" dwellings to model cottages erected by philanthropists and the bucolic follies dreamed up by 18th-century aristocrats. "The cottages are treasures, the eye is bewitched for a long time."--The Sunday Times.
Customer Reviews:
English Country Cottages.......2007-07-12
I love the book, since it reminds me of the special cottages I saw in the UK, and many more that i missed.
Average customer rating:
- some good, some fair, some poor
- Good stories - shame about the anthologer
- A Well-Chosen Collection
- Twenty-Two Tales Of Perfidious Albion*
- Dive into the genre
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English Country House Murders
Thomas Godfrey
Manufacturer: Mysterious Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
British Detectives
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An English Murder
ASIN: 0445408456 |
Customer Reviews:
some good, some fair, some poor.......2006-01-04
The good stories are by Doyle, Barr, Allingham, White, Macdonald, Brand, Rendell, and James; the fair stories are by Crofts, Carr, Hare, and Miles. The rest neither challenge nor entertain.
Good stories - shame about the anthologer.......2001-05-01
This collection gets 5 stars, but only because it would be churlish to award less to a book of 22 stories at such a giveaway price.
As an example of the anthologer's art it rates only 2 stars, or 3 stars at most. Which is kind of strange, given that that when he compiled this collection (and at least 2 others) Godfrey was listed as:
"... former editor-in-chief of *Mystery* magazine and a regular columnist for *The Armchair Detective*."
Despite these apparently substantial credentials (I've actually never heard of either of these magazines, but then I don't read many magazines), Mr Godfrey's selection of tidbits from the vast canon of English (note "English") Country House Murders is truly eccentric.
In the first place, his introduction goes at great length into the necessary qualifications for "the English Country House Mystery" - rather than *murders*.
If he'd stopped right there I'd have been beating the drum on his behalf. But he doesn't. On the contrary, he seems to fancy himself as the new Haycraft, because he starts in on a list of 14 qualities needed to justify a story as belonging in this category. The fourteenth quality, by the way, (how to identify "a proper English Country House") is subdivided into no less than a further 11 conditions!
Wow, this guy must really know his stuff.
Right?
Actually, that seems to be in some doubt.
The very first point Mr Godfrey makes is that "Authentic English Country House Mysteries are written by authentic English writers. Americans, even Canadians, may study the form and give it a go, but they invariably give themselves away as pretenders to the tradition."
Well - it's 'Godfrey's rule' - so why on earth does he insist on breaking it?
There's a story by Baroness Orczy (Hungarian), one by Dame Ngaio Marsh (New Zealander), and one by John Dickson Carr (born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania!). To be honest the first two don't accord with Godfrey's rule anyway, but Dickson Carr's story could just as easily be set in Palm Springs, California and all you'd have to do would be change the place names to give it the note of authenticity.
It's a great story, but typical English Country House it is NOT.
There are several other criticisms - some stories don't feature murders, some don't take place in a English Country House - as defined by Godfrey's rules - but my main beef is that all of these criticisms could have been easily avoided by a more judicious selection of stories.
For example, why do we get nearly 70 pages of a tedious Wilkie Collins story (no murder and precious little country house) - yet not a whiff of Ernest Bramah's blind detective, Max Carrados, nor H.C. Bailey's Mr Fortune?
Why Gideon Fell, but no hint of Edgar Wallace's epitome of understated Englishness - Mr J.G. Reeder?
Why the hysteria-ridden offering from Ethel Lina White (with little or no hint of the brilliance of her full-length works) but not a glimpse of a true 'gem' such as an item featuring Max Pemberton's Bernard Sutton (jeweller) as featured in "Jewel Mysteries I have Known"?
All too often anthologies abound in stories that are actually still available from other sources (in this case those by Conan Doyle, Christie, Allingham, Marsh, Rendell, James, etc. all fall into that category), yet fail to feature stories that truly deserve to be anthologised because, though famous in their day, they are now relatively unknown and hard to come by?
Of course there must be some big names in there to help sell the book, but Godfrey, IMO, shows far too little instinct for digging out true gems by less well-known authors.
And just in case anyone thinks it can't be done - check back to the greatest series of them all, in this particular context - the mould-breaking 'Rivals of Sherlock Holmes', 'More Rivels...', etc., all neatly topped off by Michele Slingsby's 'Murder on Her Mind'.
Ah, now those were the days when anthologisers REALLY knew their business!
So yes, you WILL get value for money. But it could have been so, so much better.
A Well-Chosen Collection.......2000-08-06
I had already read a few of these stories, but I made many new discoveries of authors to add to my reading list. I liked the way this collection was defined and arranged so that it was at once entertaining and informative. I feel like I learned a good deal about the genre's development in the process.
Twenty-Two Tales Of Perfidious Albion*.......2000-07-21
* Perfidious Albion: One of the expressions Napoleon used when referring to England. Loosely translated it means "Treacherous England.
This is an anthology of twenty-two English Country House Mysteries. Godfrey begins his book by defining what constitutes an English Country House Mystery. There are rules for everything, you know! He then proceeds to entertain us with the twenty-two selected examples which are, if not the cream of the crop, right up there with the best of them.
As for his rules, some of them are delightful. To wit:
An English Country House Mystery must take place in an English Country House.
To be self respecting, an English Country House Mystery must include a crime.
The nature of the crime must be puzzling. The identity of the perpetrator must be kept unknown for a long time.
The deduction of the identity must involve genuine reasoning ability.
These are but a few of the rules that Godfrey sets forth. These mysteries, to qualify, must truly be British, preferably upper class British.
Having defined the rules of the genre, he goes on to the works of several of the pioneers in the field and of some next generation disciples. It seems that many of Agatha Christie's stories and novels meet the requirements. In this book, we are treated to her "The Shadow on the Glass." Works by such diverse authors as G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, and P. G. Wodehouse are also included. Wodehouse and his Jeeves remind me of another rule. There should generally be live-in staff, such as a butler, in these mysteries.
I don't think that any anthology on this subject would be complete without one of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes adventures. "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange" is the Holmes selection for this anthology.
They're all good, and it's almost unrealistic to pick a favorite story. That said, I particularly enjoyed Robert Barr's "Lord Chizelrigg's Missing Fortune," which did violate one of the rules. It was a puzzle without a crime. Barr's detective, Valmont, was the prototype of the early British fictional detective, and he had a sense of humor. Many people believe that Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot was modeled on Valmont. Barr was one of the first writers to mix fictional characters with real life people in his stories. In this case, it was Thomas Alva Edison. A piece of advice Valmont had once received from Edison had become a centerpiece of Valmont's approach to solving crimes.
One of the beauties of ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE MURDERS, or any good anthology for that matter, is that it serves as a sort of a tour. On a tour, you get a little sampling of a lot of places. The intelligent traveler than uses this information to choose places that he wants to revisit, seeing much more of what the place has to offer. This anthology serves exactly the same purpose. The reader is likely to discover new (to him, at least) authors, whose fiction he likes and whose greater body of works seem worth exploring. It's also fun to revisit authors with whom one is already familiar.
ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE MURDERS did both for me. I found a few previously unknown authors who interested me, and I was able to revisit some old friends such as Sherlock Holmes. Other readers will probably have similar experiences.
Dive into the genre.......1999-02-23
This collection included several gems, but perhaps twenty stories is five too many. This is great for a little story before bedtime, a little story before you get the dishes done, a little story while you wait in line at the bank, a little story over coffee in the morning. The stories themselves are excellent examples of their craft, entertaining and clever.
Well worth a read, and you might consider even reading some stories twice.
Amazon.com
Luscious photographs and extremely practical decorating advice combine to make this volume both a delight to behold and an excellent resource for anyone looking to emulate the English-cottage look at home. Solid information on basic stylistic elements and on choosing colors and fabrics lays the groundwork for a room-by-room survey of lovely spaces. From entryways and family living spaces to bedrooms, bathrooms, home offices, and outdoor living areas, the text, the photos, and the captions offer wonderful verbal and visual advice on why these rooms work so well and how you can adapt them to work for you. A series of marvelous double-page spreads entitled "Get the Look" feature detailed photos grouped thematically to showcase such concepts as displaying collections, disguising storage, or setting an outdoor table. This is a good primer on cottage-style decorating, and even if you're already familiar with a lot of the basics, you'll still find inspiration in these pages. --Amy Handy
Book Description
Two hundred photographs and inspiring ideas for using color, texture, materials, and furnishings show the way. Go beyond the quintessential chintz and florals: think about maximizing light with everything from a big bay window to sheer curtains. Try brick or stone floorings for that warm, traditional look. Transform a hallway with painted floorboards and a rag rug. That’s the essence of beautiful country style.
Customer Reviews:
Not particularly useful.......2007-01-03
Book broken into sections: Hearth, Sheds, Outdoor, Living, etc. Limited usefulness
Romantic Country Style: Creating the English Country Look in.......2000-03-31
I love this book. I have followed every Victoria magazine and book since day one. I immediately made it my goal to be featured on the pages of Victoria Magazine. My dream came true June 92, and was the cover story. This book if full of wonderful decorating ideas, fabulous photographs and always gentle writing to put you in the mood, to sit quietly, sip a cup-o-tea and imagine yourself on the pages that are appealing to your sensual pleasure. I have always love decorating, and my own book on victorian chic style will be coming out this Fall. Again, thankyou Victoria Magazine for yet another inspirational and exquisite publication. Keep them coming.
Average customer rating:
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A Country House Companion
Mark Girouard
Manufacturer: Yale Univ Pr
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Binding: Hardcover
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