Three Houses Many Lives

‘A major achievement' Ronald Blythe, author of Akenfield A Cotswold vicarage. A former girls' boarding school in Surrey. A Jacobean house now buried in inner London. Three Houses, Many Lives tells the stories not only of the houses themselves but of the lives of the many people who lived in them. 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. Gillian Tindall is a master of miniaturist history, making a particular place, person or situation stand for a much larger picture.

Angela Thirkell reflects on her late Victorian childhood and how three houses influenced her writing style in the Barsetshire novels. These houses include her maternal grandparents' home, "The Grange," in Fulham. The second house was her parents' residence in Kensington Square, where Angela enjoyed a vibrant community. The heart of her memories lies in North End House in Rottingdean, the Burne-Jones family's seaside retreat, where her grandmother held sway, and Rudyard Kipling lived nearby.