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Madresfield: One House, One Family, One Thousand Years [Paperback]

Jane Mulvagh (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
RRP: £9.99
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Madresfield: One House, One Family, One Thousand Years + Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead + Some Country Houses and their Owners (English Journeys)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 496 pages
  • Publisher: Black Swan (26 Feb 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0552772380
  • ISBN-13: 978-0552772389
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 3.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 52,072 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
    #95 in  Books > History > Reference
    #44 in  Books > Reference > Genealogy

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Jane Mulvagh
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Product Description

Selina Hastings, Daily Mail

Scholarly, evocative and beautifully written...a thrillingly vivid historical portrait...a little masterpiece, as rich and rare as the house itself.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Nicholas Shakespeare, Telegraph

Fascinating history...Mulvagh is a tactful tour-guide...she sets the reader at ease...lays out for the first time the full heartbreaking background. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars like the curate's egg, good in parts, 12 Oct 2009
By isabel in the kitchen (brisbane australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Madresfield: One House, One Family, One Thousand Years (Paperback)
I bought this book in the hope it might be like Catherine Bailey's well-written and enthralling Black Diamonds but was very disappointed. It starts out promisingly enough with the first two chapters devoted to Evelyn Waugh's association with the Lygon family, who inspired Brideshead Revisited. Then the author returns to the Anglo-Saxon origins of Madresfield and it is here the tedium begins. Endless recitation of dull lifeless facts about the Lygons and even those ancestors whose lives were obviously full and interesting such as Fernando the corsair and Richard the seventeenth century botanist who went to Barbados and wrote about it fail to come alive under the author's pen. There are several chapters devoted to Puesyism and politics - dry subjects at the best of times but so boring I ended up skipping them and going to the final chapters dealing with the great scandal of Lord Beauchamp's homosexuality and details of what happened to the Lygons' after Brideshead.

Anybody hoping for signs of this book being "one of the best recent monographs on an English family and their country house.." as the blurb on the jacket proclaims will be disappointed. Almost nothing is made of the architecture or the interior of Madresfield apart from some glorious colour photos of some of the rooms and in using objects found in the house as chapter headings as in "The breviary", " the scrap of paper" and so on.

The writing is quite fawning in style, in that no critical word ever escapes the author's pen. Nor is there any evidence of any independent research being done. I am left with the impression that Jane Mulvagh was so overwhelmed at the privelege of being admitted to this most private of houses and its muniments that she took the greatest care not to offend the present members of the family at Madresfield. The result is a very dull book. Surely the Brideshead generation was not the only scandal in nine centuries?
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52 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Madresfield, 4 July 2008
By west brit (Dublin) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Madresfield (Hardcover)
Jane Mulvagh's book should be called The Lygons to be more accurate. She offers only tantalising glimpses into the house itself, using suspiciously round dimensions to describe the rooms, an implausibly high drawing room ceiling and throws away a comment about 60 bedrooms in her descriptions. If you are looking for a history of Madresfield you'd be better to read 'The Last Country Houses' or the Country Life articles, the latter of which don't make a mention in her bibliography. Her links from the brief descriptions of the house to the various family members are facile and 2 dimensional.

However as a history of the Lygon's the book is very good. It makes fascinating reading, particularly on the 20th century Lygons and offers glimpses to a very different way of life that was broken apart by scandal. The Brideshead Revisited inspiration seem undeniable and offers a realistic basis to a 20th century classic.


All in all a good book, but misleadingly titled.
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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A well thought-out approach to a family history, 27 Oct 2008
By Mondoro (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Madresfield (Hardcover)
Full credit for the way this book is laid out, taking a room or a feature and then relating it to a stage in the history of the Lygon family. The main interest for the ordinary reader will be the association with Brideshead Revisited, but there are other connections that are equally fascinating: with the fictional Jarndyce Case in Dickens, and with Edward Elgar. A small caveat on the latter - Mary Lygon is now thought not to be '****' in the Enigma Variations (ref Michael Kennedy), though this is not to deny that she had a close friendship with Elgar. Some excellent pictures, especially of the Arts and Crafts treasures at Madresfield Court.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A piece of England
I live in the Cotswolds and this book is about somewhere I had never heard of. The setting for the original Brideshead Revisited, it is a fascinating history of a receding social... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Mr. Paul Jones

1.0 out of 5 stars defective copy?
in this new paperback edition the centre tranche of colour plates came away from the binding almost at first opening, bringing to mind that old truism..'buy cheap, buy twice'
Published 10 months ago by Michael Pharey

5.0 out of 5 stars Madresfield
A fascinating record of a family; particularly interesting to me as my great grandmother was a Lygon
Published 11 months ago by Mrs. Gm Jazayeri

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