In Search Of The Perfect House: 500 Of The Best Buildings In Britain And Ireland

In Search Of The Perfect House: 500 Of The Best Buildings In Britain And Ireland

by Marcus Binney (Author)

Synopsis

Marcus Binney has spent 40 years looking for beautiful and little known country houses to write about in Country Life and The Times. Most books on country houses are based on properties regularly open to the public but this book is different, it is full of dream houses which have remained quietly in family ownership for centuries and which only surface to public gaze when they come on the market. Marcus has had the great good fortune to explore and photograph them from attic to basement and to subsequently write about their charms - eccentric owners, setting, gardens and grounds, architecture, interiors and domestic comforts. The result is a privileged glimpse of some of the most beautiful and largely unknown houses in the British Isles, in Ireland and the Channel Islands and a tour through the domestic history of these islands.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 880
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Published: 30 Aug 2007

ISBN 10: 0297844555
ISBN 13: 9780297844556
Book Overview: Adapted largely from the celebrated 'House of the Week' column in The Times property section - about unknown gems in private hands seen for the first time as they come up for sale. At nearly 900 pages a huge doorstopper of a book - the perfect Christmas present in the mould of Simon Jenkins' England's Thousand Best Houses which sold over 50,000 copies at 30.

Media Reviews
'Colleagues who have seen Binney at work...will know his pocket notebooks...Some of us may have wondered what would be come of their contents; we now have our answer. This book is a memorial to Binney's Flying Dutchman-like pursuit of architecture throughout Britain, and his remarkable eclecticism of taste.' -- COUNTRY LIFE Clive Aslet
Author Bio
Marcus Binney studied the history of art at Cambridge, and became editor of Country Life magazine in 1984. From the beginning a force in the conservation movement he co-curated the famous 1975 V&A exhibition 'The Destruction of the Country House', which generated huge publicity and inspired the foundation of SAVE Britain's Heritage which, with Marcus as chairman, rapidly became Britain's most vigorous conservation body. He has curated other exhibitions, founded or helped to create numerous preservation trusts and societies including the Railway Heritage Trust and the Thirties Society and has lead many successful attempts to conserve Britain's built heritage. He was awarded the OBE for services to conservation in 1983. Since 1991 he has been Architecture Correspondent of the Times, writing extensively on architecture including the House of the Week column. His books range from Our Vanishing Heritage (1984) to Great Houses in Europe (2003) which is also the title of a 39-part TV series which has been broadcast extensively in North America, the Middle and Far East.