A Home for All Seasons

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Furthermore, if those who decide the allocations of the real and unreal are cruel, mad or colossally wrong, what then? With ancient beams crossing the ceiling, the date they'd been given of 1800 seemed out by centuries. With ancient beams crossing the ceiling, the date they’d been given of 1800 seemed out by centuries. The result of his labours is a fascinating comparison of the 16th and 21st centuries, not the least of which is the plague and its more modern equivalent. Those involved Protestants escaping mainland Europe and the consequent difficulties they had in integrating with the existing population.

Afew years ago, Gavin Plumley and his husband, Alastair, bought a house in the Herefordshire village of Pembridge.I listened to the audible audio edition but it isn't on Goodreads yet and I can't find the asin number to add it. The perfect Christmas present for anyone who has ever been curious about the house they live in and who might (or might not) have lived there before them. Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. If I’m honest, the art history was less interesting to me than the social history aspect of the book, but it has inspired me to take more interest in historical detail and the bibliography included will be invaluable for this. As Gavin traced Stepps House through various hands and eras, he uncovers a past steeped in history and art, memory and nature that resonates powerfully with our present.

Working with several interlocking cycles chiefly the seasons in art, farming and Elizabethan England, this book is also an extended meditation on the big issues of today and their effects on village life.

I don’t know if the filling stations are still disturbing the village, but if they are, there are plenty of compensations: a 14th-century church with, so the story goes, the marks of Cromwellian musket balls still showing in its west door; a spectacular pagoda-like bell house dating back to the 1200s; an early 16th-century market hall; 17th-century almshouses; and streets stacked to the gills with picturesquely wonky black-and-white houses.

Mixing history and art, memoir and landscape, A Home for All Seasons is grand in its sweep and intimate in its account of rural life. I assumed (like other reviewers) that this would concentrate on the house and surrounding areas of Herefordshire where author Gavin Plumley lives. Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy. We get a little of the history of Stepps House in Pembridge but then are too many "filler" sections, presumably to pad out the word count.

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What I found a bit of a bore was the author (there I have said it) he seemed to drone on a bit if I am honest.Corvus Atlantic’s commercial fiction list which includes women’s, historical, romance, sci-fi, crime and thriller. From a simple question about the age of a house, this book takes you on a much wider journey, encompassing art, literature, history and nature, as well as the inescapable fragility of life. What starts out as a straightforward house history morphs into something else, a wide-ranging meditation on place and past, taking in climate change, rural depopulation, the Reformation and folklore. Grove Press An imprint of Grove Atlantic, an American independent publisher, who publish in the UK through Atlantic Books.