The Power and the Glory
  • Published: 3 October 2024
  • ISBN: 9781529934526
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 432
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The Power and the Glory

The Country House Before the Great War

Formats & editions
Paperback
6 Apr 2001
Hardback
14 Jan 2025
EBook
3 Oct 2024
EBook
4 Jan 2011
Paperback
1 Dec 2010
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Adrian Tinniswood opens the doors on the excess, intrigue and absurdities of life in the late Victorian and Edwardian country house

'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
  • Published: 3 October 2024
  • ISBN: 9781529934526
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 432
Categories:
Share…

About the authors

Graham Greene

Graham Greene was born in 1904. He worked as a journalist and critic, and in 1940 became literary editor of the Spectator. He was later employed by the Foreign Office. As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography, two of biography and four books for children. He also wrote hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991.

portrait photo of Graham Greene

Adrian Tinniswood

Adrian Tinniswood OBE FSA is the author of fifteen books on social and architectural history, including Behind the Throne: A Domestic History of the Royal Household; The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars, a New York Timesand Sunday Times bestseller; His Invention So Fertile: A Life of Christopher Wren and The Verneys: a True Story of Love, War and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England, which was shortlisted for the BBC/Samuel Johnson Prize. He has worked with a number of heritage organisations including the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Trust, and is currently Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Buckingham and Visiting Fellow in Heritage and History at Bath Spa University.

portrait photo of Adrian Tinniswood

Praise for The Power and the Glory

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

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this book is the palpable excitement felt by late 19th-century owners about their houses’ newfangled features

The Times

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, Country Life

Entertaining... Illuminating... A pleasure to read

Jane Ridley, Literary Review

[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

New Statesman
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