Book Description
For millions of people in the English-speaking world, the now standard image of the British country house is Brideshead Castle in Wiltshire: the domed and doomed baroque country seat of the Marchmain family seen in the BBC adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel, Brideshead Revisited. In real life, the house used for the television series is Castle Howard, one of the largest and most opulent private homes in England, located on 10,000 acres of gardens, parkland, and woods in North Yorkshire, now visited by more than 200,000 tourists a year.Between 3,500 and 4,000 country houses--large, often elegantly furnished and surrounded by extensive estates--remain more or less intact in England today, although frequently converted to non-residential uses. Whether in public or private hands, the best known of them have become a major magnet for British and foreign tourists, attracting about 20 million paying visitors each year. Country houses, with their furnishings and landscaped settings, have been called England's one important contribution to art history. They figure prominently in the ongoing debate over how much of any "National Heirtage" is worth preserving.In The Fate of the English Country House, David Littlejohn describes the past glories and troubled present condition of "the stately homes of England," both those that continue to serve as private houses, and those that have been turned into museums, tourist attractions, convention centers, hotels, country clubs, schools, apartments, hospitals, even prisons. By means of extensive conversations with their owners and managers (the book contains more than 50 photographs of the houses), the author takes us on a private tour of these remarkable places and evaluates the many proposals that have been put forward for their survival.In the opening chapter we meet three near-neighbors in Oxfordshire, whose personal accounts introduce many of the themes of the book: the 11th Duke of Marlborough, whose family has been living at Blenheim Palace since 1710; the 21st Baron Saye and Sele, whose ancestors built romantic, moated Broughton Castle between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries; and the Honorable Ann Harcourt, mistress of Stanton Harcourt Manor, which has belonged to her family since the twelfth century.Most of the conversations revolve around the financial, legal, and strategic problems of owning and running an immense, archaic estate, designed for an age of unquestioned privilege, grandiose entertaining, and an almost unlimited pool of servants: a time before income, capital gains, or inheritance taxes had to be taken into account, before one had to open one's gates to the hordes of touristsout "Doing the Statelies" between Easter Sunday and the end of October. Littlejohn finds that as government support for privately owned historic houses dries up, more and more of them are being converted to other uses, or left empty to decay, their paintings and furnishings sent to the auction houses to help pay tax and repair bills.As they grow more and more difficult to justify or maintain, English country hoses have become increasingly "endangered species" in today's alien economic and political climate. What is at stake is a major piece of England's architectural and cultural heritage, no easier to defend than superannuated ocean liners or great Victorian hotels. The Fate of the English Country House addresses the immediate future of these homes and allows readers to contemplate the history of great houses that have, in some cases, been owned and occupied by the same families for 200, 400, 600, or even 900 years. ... Read more

Book Description
Photographer Thomas Harding, armed only with his pinhole camera and a keen eye for the unusual, traveled thousands of miles of backroads and lanes to record the remnants of a vanishing genre of folk architecture--the outhouse. Harding boldly stepped where others might fear to tread. He followed the elusive drain from the Bible (Deuteronomy 23:12-13), to the Romans (indoor facilities over streams of water), to the lowly rural American outhouse. The intrepid Harding traced a little-known pipe-dream .... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A real gem
I found this book quite by accident several months ago, and since then have given over ten as gifts. I never thought I'd like a book about outhouses, but this one is a real gem. The photos are very creative andevocative: Thomas Harding knows his stuff, as his years with the BachrachPhotographers can attest to. He's paired these lovely photos (ofnot-so-lovely subjects) with quotes from great literature, pulled out ofcontext in the most hilarious ways. My favorite one is a picture of a"two-holer" paired with a classic Edmund Waller quote: "Myjoy, my grief, my love,/Did all within this circle move!" Give thisbook a chance, you'll be glad you did. ... Read more

Book Description
Brilliantly written essays on the aesthetic principles andenduring motives of architecture. A classic of architectural history andtheory, Heavenly Mansions interprets architecture as a reflection of theage in which it flowers, and traces the alternating themes of fantasy andfunctionalism as exemplified in various styles and in the works of anumber of influential men, including Wren, Viollet-le-Duc, WilliamButterfield, and Le Corbusier. Succinctly summarizing 800 years ofviewpoints about architecture, it ranges from Gothic architecture to theRenaissance to the influence of modern abstract art on twentieth-centuryarchitecture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Summerson: Heavenly.
Certain architectural writers are a pleasure to read. John Summerson is one of them, approaching "la creme de la creme."Few can match him in terms of erudition, clarity of expressed thought, and sheer elegance of language.I think all students - after their first basic history courses - ought to read the following chapters:

"Heavenly Mansions: an Interpretation of Gothic"
"Viollet-le-Duc and the Rational Point of View"
"Architecture, Painting, and Le Corbusier"
"The Mischevious Analogy"

The other chapters are also all good, but the above will probably be the most interesting to those concerned with the development of modern architectural theory, giving an interested mind as much to think about as Complexity and Contradiction or Learning from Las Vegas (perhaps more than both combined). ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Town and Country Planning, published by Thomson Gale on November 1, 2006. The length of the article is 1012 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The sad end of the wired city.(The Regeneration Game)
Author: Andrew Lainton
Publication: Town and Country Planning (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 75Issue: 11Page: 294(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

TREASURES OF LOUISIANA
A well done book on Louisiana's spectacular plantations.The state is blessed with the best of these old homes and this book captures the essense of these structures quite well.All of the famous plantations are given several images and the text though not indepth is revealing.This is not quite as good as Gleasons book on the same subject, but it is close and makes a great companion book to it.If you have any interest in these singular buildings then i highly recommend this book along with Gleasons.

fantastic photography
This is a great book for anyone who is interested in plantation homes. It has over 80 wonderful photographs, and tells the story of each home shown. There are even two or three victorian style homes, built in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Very interesting and informative. I would recommend this book to anyone, wether your buying it for the information or the photographs!

beautiful photos
the book has lovely photos and briefly tells about each home. It would have been nice if there were more photos of the interior of homes. But the book has beautiful photography and is overall: GREAT!

Breathtaking Photography, Interesting Commentary
This book is hands-down one of the most beautiful picture books on Louisiana's remaining plantation homes.While most are in exquisite condition, there are a very few which aren't.The short story of eachplantation home is interesting and the photographs are gorgeous!It makesone want to go out, find a plantation home, buy it and restore it!Thereader will be amazed at the wealth these planters accumulated, manifestedin these awesome homes.Not all of the homes are huge antebelllummansions, though.I personally found the Creole plantations wonderfulexamples of a simple albeit beautiful home.I would recommend this book toanyone who loves old homes, Southern architecture or photography ingeneral. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A majestic portrait!
I can't express how exquisitely these 4 volumes are packaged.Take a look at the price!!!There is a large case that contains four slender volumes bound in what appears to be handmade paper.Each volume focuses on one of four palaces.Each one contains watercolours with a description paragraph to the left.The watercolours are breathtakingly reproduced -- bright colors, intricate details.Treat yourself to these four, perhaps the most beautiful book ever produce on the subject of Imperial Russia.Go ahead and splurge!

Wonderful art and architecture books
These four volumes are a wonfderful collectionof watercolours and grisailles from the times of Imperial Russia. They would be suitable for anyone with an interestin art, architecture, Russia and St Petersburg. They show the four palaces (sadly there is no volume for other palaces such as Ropsha, Strelna or Oranienbaum) as they were before they were destroyed by the Germans in WWII. The palaces (both interiors and exteriors) as well as their gardens are brought to life by this wonderful collection. They are shown as they exisited throughout the 19th century and are interesting not only for their artistic and architectual merits but also for their intrinsic historic and cultural value. Very strongle recommended. ... Read more

Book Description
Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's magnificent mountaintop home in Charlottesville, Virginia, has attracted public attention ever since Jefferson's day, when sightseers regularly visited the grounds in hopes of catching a glimpse of the former president. Today, each year more than half a million people from around the world visit Monticello, the only home in America on the United Nations' list of World Heritage Sites that must be protected at all costs.

Thomas Jefferson's Monticello is a superb collection of essays, adorned with beautiful color photography, that showcases this American treasure. Designed by Jefferson himself, Monticello is a model of elegance and symmetry. It is also home to Jefferson's world-class collection of art and porcelain from France, scientific instruments from England, the finest American furniture from Philadelphia and New York, and enduring furnishings made in Monticello's own joinery by enslaved craftsmen. The celebrated gardens and grounds form an experimental yet breathtakingly lovely landscape featuring flowers, fruits, and vegetables of the Old and New Worlds.

Featuring essays by Monticello's scholarly staff, this stunning book explores all aspects of Jefferson's home. A section on the plantation and the enslaved community at Monticello provides a larger context in which to place and understand the house, its activities, and its owner. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Thomas Jefferson's Monticello
Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, an essay in architecture, takes readers on a historical tour of the third U.S. president's cherished home near Charlottesville, Virginia, through well-written text and gorgeous, full-color photography. The book includes floor plans and photographs of Jefferson's original architectual elevations, as well as drawings of the finished building that we are most familiar with today. It describes Jefferson as art collector and plantation life on Monticello's farms, and it explores thefour seasons in Monticello's gardens. Published in 2002 by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.

A Great Look at a Great Home
This work successfully links the many unique qualities of Thomas Jefferson's personality to the unique qualities of the home that he designed and spent most of his life building and rebuilding. All of the intriguing features of this home are covered.
Anyone interested in this remarkable man and his home who is unable to visit Monticello in person should strongly consider this work.

Exceptional
This is a highly informative, well documented book covering all aspects of the design and building of Thomas Jefferson's home, plus insights into why things were done the way they were done, through Jefferson's own notes, sketches and correspondence. Plus,the photographs are exquisite.

Beautiful guide to America's most interesting house
One of the clichés about Monticello is that few houses do so good a job revealing the personality of its builder. But clichés get to be such generally because there's truth to them, and that's definitely the case here. If Thomas Jefferson was one of the most interesting figures in American history (and I think that's unquestionably true), then Monticello may well be one of America's most interesting houses. And for this colorful book produced by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, we are guided through the house and grounds by people who know their stuff.

Specifically, the chapters of this title are written by Monticello's director of restoration, the curator, the director of gardens and grounds, and other experts associated with the Foundation. Large, colorful photos are accompanied by informed commentary and all the requisite history, as well as documentation of the decades of restoration work it has taken to get the house and grounds to its current condition. A book doesn't make up for a visit in person-- if anything, I wished for more photos of the interior, especially of the book room and "cabinet." But for a general overview of the house, grounds, and collection, and an insight into the man himself, this book is hard to beat. I recommend it as a souvenir, as well as a nice companion to a Jefferson biography. ... Read more