The Manor Houses of Dorset~Dorset's manor houses are one of its greatest glories and a high quality illustrated book on them has long been overdue. The authors have spent seven years researching and writing the text, which is illustrated with 200 specially commissioned colour photographs and nearly 100 engravings, portraits, watercolours and drawings.
Once the hub of a self-sufficient rural community, their fortunes have varied. Some are still lived in by the descendants of those who built them, others have become modest farmhouses. A handful have endured partial demolition, whilst restoration by recent owners has given others a new lease of life, ushering in a golden age the equal of any in the past.
Dorset's manor houses also chart the lives of those who have lived in them. Love affairs, contested wills, now forgotten gentry happiest in the saddle, imprisonment for debt, the tragedy of war, extravagance, even murder - the rich ebb and flow of human weaknesses and strengths breathes vigorous life into
The Manor Houses of Dorset.
UNA RUSSELL AND AUDREY GRINDROD
Hardback, 288 pages
ISBN 978-1-904-34952-5
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Trying to Please~
The long-awaited memoirs of the distinguished writer and broadcaster'Poor old baby, he's only trying to please.' So said John Julius Norwich's nurse after his birth in 1929. That he has successfully lived up to her words is a tribute to an appetite for life allied to a remarkable gift for friendship.
John Julius Norwich's parents were Duff and Diana Cooper: the former a cabinet minister, his mother a famous beauty. In 1940 the 11-year-old John Julius was evacuated to Canada, returning 2 years later across an Atlantic full of U-boats. Wartime Eton followed. Then came the British Embassy in Paris, where his father was Britain's post-war ambassador. With his mother John Julius watched French troops cross the Rhine under enemy fire and witnessed the Nuremberg Trials. National Service in the navy was followed by Oxford. In 1952 John Julius married and joined the Foreign Office, serving first in Belgrade and then in Beirut - inspired postings that sowed the seeds of his delight in the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds.
After leaving the Foreign Office John Julius found success as an author, television presenter and panellist on BBC radio
Round Britain Quiz. A secret affair produced a daughter, placing an inevitable strain on his marriage. By the 1970s he had a second wife, and a working year that combined writing, broadcasting and lecturing.
Happily,
Trying to Please is no mere list of achievements, but an engaging and often amusing account of its author's past that breathes fresh life into the worlds he describes.
JOHN JULIUS NORWICH
Hardback
384 pages + 24 pages plates
ISBN 978-1-904-34958-7
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