The Country House at War - Fighting the Great War at Home and in the Trenches

The Country House at War - Fighting the Great War at Home and in the Trenches Synopsis

Country House at War presents a history of the war through the houses and estates maintained by the National Trust. It shows what happened to the people who lived and worked in many great houses, both upstairs and downstairs, and portrays how they were affected by the war and what happened to those estates in its aftermath. The progress and impact of war can be charted through the buildings and their estates - lawns that had once hosted tea parties and croquet given over to machine gun training and convalescent exercises, for example. With many fascinating and poignant personal stories and many hitherto unpublished photographs of the time, this is an important celebration and commemoration of the First World War.

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The Good Book Guide Review

This book explores the effects of the Great War on the people who lived and worked on properties that later became part of the National Trust. The houses included range from the medieval castle Chirk, to the Palladian grandeur of Clandon Park, and take in tiny cottages like that of T E Lawrence at Clouds Hill, or the more substantial but certainly less than grand Max Gate where Thomas Hardy lived, and Shaw’s Corner, the home of Bernard Shaw. Dunham Massey in Cheshire, the home during the Great War of the Stamford Military Hospital, is the centrepiece of the Trust’s First World War commemorations, but almost every property will display some echo of the conflict, some distant, some closer. Many of the properties remain much the same now as they did a century ago, when soldiers like Tommy Agar-Robartes, whose bedroom in Lanhydrock House is on display virtually unchanged, left in 1915, never to return.

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ISBN: 9781907892776
Publication date: 07/08/2014
Format: Hardback

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About Simon Greaves

Simon Greaves works as a full-time author and illustrator specialising in educaional books. In 2003 he created and published the Shakespeare Comic Book Series for secondary schools.