Anne de Courcy

It’s a wonder any of our great country houses survived the 20th century

Adrian Tinniswood describes how crippling ‘estate duties’ forced owners to demolish their properties, or carve them up, or turn them into safari parks

Chatsworth, the beautiful ‘palace of the north’, faced ruin in the 1950s as a result of crippling death duties. [Getty Images] 
issue 20 November 2021
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  • Noble Ambitions: The Fall and Rise of the Post-war Country House

    Adrian Tinniswood

    Cape, pp. 416, £30

One of Adrian Tinniswood’s recent books, The Long Weekend, is a portrait of country house life in the interwar years. Hedonistic, carefree, fuelled by an army of servants, such an existence now seems a distant dream. In this companion volume he takes the story further, looking at what happened to the country house after 1945.

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