The Power and the Glory

Author Adrian Tinniswood
Narrator Matthew Spencer
Publisher Random House
Publish Date 17 October 2024
Run Time 14 hours and 36 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Architecture: palaces, stately homes and mansions, European history, History, Rural communities, Social and cultural history, Social classes, Society and Social Sciences, The Arts, The countryside, country life: general interest.

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What to expect

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

Critics Review

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

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.

Country Life

Entertaining… Illuminating… A pleasure to read

Literary Review

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

New Statesman

[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

Jewish Chronicle

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.

Times Literary Supplement

A significant part of social history, led by Adrian Tinniswood.

Telegraph

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