THE POWER AND THE GLORY

Glamour scholarship and superlative storytelling an enthralling read LUCY WORSLEY Adrian Tinniswood opens the doors on the excess intrigue and absurdities of life in the late Victorian and Edwardian country house In the decades before the First World War the owners of the nation s stately homes revelled in a golden age of glory and glamour Nothing lay beyond their reach in a world where privilege and hedonism went hand in hand with duty and honour This was a time when the ancestral seats of ancient nobility stood side by side with the fabulous palaces of Jewish bankers and Indian princes when dukes and duchesses mixed with aristocratic society hostesses who had learned to dance in the chorus line and self made millionaires who had been raised in the slums of Manchester and Birmingham The Power and the Glory explores the country house during this golden age when Britain ruled over a quarter of the world s population when its stately homes were at their most opulent and when for the privileged few life in the country house was the best life of all A wonderful book JUDITH FLANDERS Scintillating and brilliant from a master of the subject GARETH RUSSELL