Three Houses, Many Lives - Hardcover

Tindall, Gillian

3.27

37 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 070118518X ISBN 13: 9780701185183

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2012

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A Cotswold vicarage, a former girls' boarding school in Surrey and a Jacobean house now buried in inner London -- these three houses represent the changing face of England over four centuries through the lives of the many people who lived in them.

Many lives indeed, from the wealthiest to the poorest. The pages of Gillian Tindall's fascinating new book teem with pen portraits, from Eugenia Stanhope who sold Lord Chesterfield's scandalous letters, to the autocratic vicar who held the same parish from age 28 to 82, from the just-literate wife of a parish clerk who wrote riddles in his registers, to the cow-keeper who farmed 226 acres in Hornsey till he sold them profitably when the railways came through.

The railways bypassed the Cotswold village, famous for its stone-masons, which remains rural to this day; whereas some Surrey inhabitants were, like the Jane Austen characters they resembled, already commuting to London in coaching days. Each house has gone through a series of physical transformations, most of all the seventeenth century merchant's house which eventually became the Conservative Club and then a drinking club for lorry drivers.

Gillian Tindall is a master of miniaturist history, making a particular place, person or situation stand for a much larger picture, and it is with the skill of an accomplished researcher and elegant writer that she paints this panorama, from the Reformation to the Oxford Movement, from poor relief run by church vestries to the age of the blogger.

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Review:

"Three houses - a Cotswold vicarage, a one-time girls' boarding school and a Jacobean house. Gillian Tindall explores the lives of those who once lived there, and through her research she is able to reveal four centuries of English history. Tindall has sensitivity to the past like few others; her approach to history is delicate, detailed and revealing. For my money, this is one of the history leads of the year" (Bookseller)

"Gillian Tindall is a tapestry maker. She finds patterns in history – woven from close research into people and places – that no one else would have the persistence and insight to pursue. In this unique and often joyful chronicle, she interweaves the stories of three houses which marked crucial stages in her own life" (Independent)

"Gillian Tindall is gifted with an archeological imagination. [She] circles around these houses, bringing out their light, colour and preciousness by employing a method that crosses genres. This book is an education in many things" (Frances Spalding Literary Review)

"Her excavation of the histories of the ordinary people who lived in each place is fascinating and she vividly brings the past to life via domestic minutiae" (Tina Jackson Metro)

"A gentle, yet rigorous examination of the story of three historic buildings...each chapter is an engaging meditation on English history. Thanks to Ms Tindall the stories of all three are better understood than at any point in their history, and all have their place in a perfectly crafted book" (Country Life)

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