Three Houses, Many Lives

Three houses - a Cotswold vicarage, a one-time girls' boarding school and a Jacobean house. Gillian Tindall explores the lives of those who once lived there, and through her research she is able to reveal four centuries of English history. Tindall has sensitivity to the past like few others; her approach to history is delicate, detailed and revealing. For my money, this is one of the history leads of the year

Bookseller

Gillian Tindall is gifted with an archeological imagination. [She] circles around these houses, bringing out their light, colour and preciousness by employing a method that crosses genres. This book is an education in many things

Frances Spalding, Literary Review

Gillian Tindall is a tapestry maker. She finds patterns in history – woven from close research into people and places – that no one else would have the persistence and insight to pursue. In this unique and often joyful chronicle, she interweaves the stories of three houses which marked crucial stages in her own life

Independent

With a detective’s forensic patience and the narrative ear of a novelist, Tindall unpicks the histories of these houses

Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph

The big surprise of this book is the fascinating thread of memories which holds the narrative together

Press Association

Subtle, delicate and slightly dotty. Tindall is attracted to the idea of lives overlooked and deeds mislaid…this intriguing, imaginative book is very much my cup of tea

Lucy Worsley, Evening Standard

Tindall is a forensic researcher [and] has an imaginative historical sensibility and her way of revisiting the past – as if approaching it through the back door – has both subtlety and poignancy. The names of Tindall’s inhabitants may sometimes pass in a blur but together they form a roll-call of the predecessors of modern Britain. There are of course thousands of other houses like the three in this touching book...whose stories will never be told

Michael Prodger, Financial Times

She is a writer with a quiet genius for local history and empathetic understanding of ordinary people

Iain Finlayson, Saga

A triumph over time and death, proof that the past is all around us

Times Literary Supplement

Her excavation of the histories of the ordinary people who lived in each place is fascinating and she vividly brings the past to life via domestic minutiae

Tina Jackson, Metro

A gentle, yet rigorous examination of the story of three historic buildings...each chapter is an engaging meditation on English history. Thanks to Ms Tindall the stories of all three are better understood than at any point in their history, and all have their place in a perfectly crafted book

Country Life

A deeply rewarding read

Sally Morris, Daily Mail

Both warm and poignant and a joy to read

Hannah Britt, Daily Express

It’s a worthy project, but in the most fascinating way

Lesley McDowell, Glasgow Sunday Herald

Tindall transforms bricks and mortar into fascinating social history

Christopher Hirst, Independent