Old New World - Hardcover

Lambton, Lucinda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002570939 ISBN 13: 9780002570930

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2000

Synopsis

How the best of the Old World is being preserved by the New – to coincide with a three-part BBC 2 TV series.

Lucinda Lambton, author of our very successful Lucinda Lambton’s A–Z of Britain, is unique in her marvellous ability to find and soliloquize rapturously over historical flotsam that is both genuinely interesting and important, and renews and refreshes our understanding of the social and cultural world in which we live.

In this new book she sets out to show that it is in America rather than in Britain that she finds that sense of living history, where the culture and traditions of old Europe are most vibrantly alive. Right across the spectrum of American life, she argues, there is a respect for the past, a sense of continuity with tradition, which much of overdeveloped Europe has either lost or is losing. The atmosphere of nineteenth-century village life, for example, is more alive in the proudly painted main streets of smalltown America than in their British counterparts. The elegant life of the nineteenth century gentleman is more present in Washington D.C.’s Georgetown than in London’s Mayfair. The discreet charm of aristocratic country living still thrives in the mansions of, say, Virginia when it has all but vanished from the stately homes of England (now overrun by tourists and over-restored by the National Trust). Being a nation of immigrants, generations of new Americans have lovingly preserved the customs, habits and heritage of the homelands they left behind.

‘Luscious, loopy and irresistible, Lambton is a national treasure’ Independent on Sunday

About this title

Synopsis:

In this text, Lucinda Lambton sets out to show that it is in America rather than in Britain that she finds a sense of living history, where the culture and traditions of old Europe are most vibrantly alive. She argues that right across the spectrum of American life is a respect for the past, a sense of continuity with tradition, which much of overdeveloped Europe has either lost or is losing.

About the Author:

Lucinda Lambton has been an architectural photographer for 35 years and has made over 50 television programmes on architectural oddities. She is married to Peregrine Worsthorne.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0002570939
• ISBN 13: 9780002570930
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192