Chatsworth
Desperate remedies
One of Adrian Tinniswood’s recent books, The Long Weekend, is a portrait of country house life in the interwar years.…
A natural sensualist
Charm is a weasel word; it can evoke the superficial and insincere, and engender suspicion and mistrust. But charm in…
Loved and lost
Kathleen Kennedy and her elder brother JFK were the grandchildren of upwardly mobile Irish Catholic immigrants. John F. Fitzgerald, ‘Honey…
Great halls, last balls
Contrary to popular myth, the exuberant flame of life in the English country house was not extinguished by tears at…
Carrying on regardless
This big, bristling, deeply-furrowed book kicks off with a picture of the British countryside just before the second world war.…
The poor man in his castle
Servicemen used paintings as dartboards. Schoolchildren dismantled banisters and paneling for firewood. Architects from the Ministry of Works acted like…
