Historian Dan Cruickshank is invited through the closed doors of six of Britain’s greatest private houses in an illuminating and surprising journey through our architectural history. These fascinating buildings remain private homes and closed to the public, but their owners have allowed Dan Cruickshank to roam the corridors, tease out each home’s story – who built them, lived in them and lost them – and uncover tales of excess and profligacy, power and ambition. From the disarming Elizabethan charm of South Wraxall Manor, the classical rigour of Kinross in Scotland and the majesty and ingenuity of Hawksmoor’s Easton Neston to the Palladian sweep of Wentworth Woodhouse with its 600-foot frontage, the Victorian exuberance of Clandeboye and the Edwardian ingenuity of Lutyens’ Marsh Court, the secrets of these houses reveal not only the story of our architecture, but also reflect the fortunes of the nation itself.
The Country House Revealed
