In the years after the Second World War, the nation’s stately homes were in crisis. Tottering under the weight of rising taxes and a growing sense that they had no place in twentieth-century Britain, hundreds of ancestral piles were dismantled and demolished.
From the Rolling Stones rocking Longleat to Christine Keeler rocking Cliveden, Noble Ambitions takes us on a lively tour of these crumbling halls of power, as a rakish aristocratic Swinging London collides with traditional rural values. Adrian Tinniswood shows that the country house is a lens through which we can understand the shifting fortunes of Britain in an era of monumental social change.
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