The fall and rise of the stately home

by Peter Mandler

How much do the English really care about this stately homes? In this path-breaking and wide-ranging account of the changing fortunes and status of the stately homes of England over the past two centuries, Peter Mandler melds social, cultural, artistic and political perspectives and reveals much about the relationship of the nation to its past and its traditional ruling elite. Challenging the prevailing view of a modern English culture besotted with its history and its aristocracy, Mandler portrays instead a continuously changing and modernizing society in which both popular and intellectual attitudes towards the aristocracy - and its stately homes - have veered from selective appreciation to outright hostility, and only recently to thoroughgoing admiration. With great panache, Mandler adds the missing pieces to the story of the country house. Going beyond its architects and its owners, he brings to centre stage a much wider cast of characters - aristocratic entrepreneurs, anti-aristoc