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The Power and the Glory

The Country House Before the Great War

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The Power and the Glory

By: Adrian Tinniswood
Narrated by: Matthew Spencer
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

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.

'Glamour, scholarship and superlative storytelling [...] an enthralling read.'
LUCY WORSLEY

'A wonderful book.'
JUDITH FLANDERS

'Scintillating and brilliant, from a master of the subject.'
GARETH RUSSELL

© Adrian Tinniswood 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024

 Architecture Europe Great Britain Home Design & Renovation House & Home Social Classes & Economic Disparity Sociology Inspiring Royalty

Critic reviews

Adrian Tinniswood has done it again. His trademark blend of glamour, scholarship and superlative storytelling makes this an enthralling read. (Lucy Worsley)
A wonderful book. There is no one better than Adrian Tinniswood to explore the dichotomy of the great country houses of Britain in the long prewar period, as he shows us ancestral hangings mixed with new telephone exchanges, coronation robes with marble swimming baths that doubled as ballrooms. (Judith Flanders)
Scintillating and brilliant, from a master of the subject. The book is like sitting down to dinner with a fascinating companion - it is deeply learned but also erudite, conversational, and interesting. A beautiful portrait of the Victorian and the Edwardian country house, full of analysis and anecdotes. (Gareth Russell)
Entertaining... One of the most enjoyable aspects of this book is the palpable excitement felt by late 19th-century owners about their houses’ newfangled features
Shot through with Prof Tinniswood's signature sardonic wit and delicious one-liners... Anyone who wielded cultural clout is here. The range and scope of his book is breathtaking. (Timothy Mowl)
Entertaining... Illuminating... A pleasure to read (Jane Ridley)
A whirling, waltzing panorama through the last carefree age of British nobility...[Tinniswood has] a terrific eye for detail and anecdote, all the better to show the country house in its most extreme age of pomp, profligacy and exuberance
[Tinniswood] welcomes the reader into a world of glamour and mad extravagance… Whichever stately home door he opens, he has an enjoyable story about the residents… what a wonderful bird’s eye view Tinniswood give us
Tinniswood covers hundreds of fascinating houses from the famous to the under-sung that we really should know about... The tone is wry; the excesses on display sometimes jaw - dropping.
A significant part of social history, led by Adrian Tinniswood. (Telegraph)
All stars
Most relevant
A very interesting book, I thoroughly enjoyed it . I would recommend it. I will listen to it again.

The history

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For me, the double volume social history of the country house is riveting. Not only are these works also social geographies, they help to explain the almost complete change in the class-based use of space. In addition, they explain why some of the remaining edifices are now grand hotels or golf clubs and leisure centres. I was sad and regretful over the vanishing villages and vanishing or ruined and remaining homes that are now either museums or abandoned, like some Jacobean houses in central England. Above all, the changes in garden design, especially under Gertrude Jekyll and Edward Lutyens, is fascinating. I recommend both volumes highly. Dr Jane Starfield

Adrian Tinniswood, The Power and the Glory

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Please, don’t let narrators do accents. It’s awful. Other than that, well done, if you like lists of things that happened.

Ew!

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One that repeats the habit of presenting the book as a list of events, dates and people. The problem is that the author understands nothing about architecture, styles and cultural connections of the time. And this is as obvious as it is embarrassing.

A historian cannot be insulated. In other words: a historian who only understands the process of archiving facts is not a historian; he is simply an archive worker.

So my rating for the book is 2 stars.

Livro medíocre.

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