Part of Series
"There is nothing quite like the English country house anywhere else in the world." So pronounces Vita Sackville-West in the beautiful essay that opens English Country Houses, a brief history of the English country house from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. People may know of Sackville West's novels, or her passion for gardening, or her relationship with Virginia Woolf, but few know of her efforts to boost the morale of her beloved England during World War II. Sackville-West spent her childhood years at Knole House, a stately country home that deeply influenced her life and work. In entertaining and accessible prose she brings a deep affection to the task of boosting the morale of a country beset by war. This volume in the Britain in Pictures series is a love letter to the elegant homes of the English countryside and served as a balm to a besieged country. Writing at the height of the Blitz, as cities lay in smoldering ruins after relentless bombing, Sackville-West demonstrates a yearning for the safety provided by these exceptional buildings. We discover the architecture of the stately houses, with details conveyed in such entertaining and vivid prose that the buildings and surrounding areas come to life. The story is not just about the buildings, however, but also about the people who built and lived in them, from the most common of squires to the highest-born kings and queens. Equal parts architectural history and cultural history, this insider's view is quintessentially British. Its elegant package, with a ribbon for bookmarking, makes it the perfect gift for any Anglophile.
Author
Novels of British writer Victoria Mary Sackville-West, known as Vita, include The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931). This prolific English author, poet, and memoirist in the early 20th century lived not so privately. While married to the diplomat Harold Nicolson, she conducted a series of scandalous amorous liaisons with many women, including the brilliant Virginia Woolf. They had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had same-sex relationships. Her exuberant aristocratic life was one of inordinate privilege and way ahead of her time. She frequently traveled to Europe in the company of one or the other of her lovers and often dressed as a man to be able to gain access to places where only the couples could go. Gardening, like writing, was a passion Vita cherished with the certainty of a vocation: she wrote books on the topic and constructed the gardens of the castle of Sissinghurst, one of England's most beautiful gardens at her home. She published her first book Poems of East and West in 1917. She followed this with a novel, Heritage, in 1919. A second novel, The Heir (1922), dealt with her feelings about her family. Her next book, Knole and the Sackvilles (1922), covered her family history. The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931) are perhaps her best known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of convention. In 1948 she was appointed a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. She continued to develop her garden at Sissinghurst Castle and for many years wrote a weekly gardening column for The Observer. In 1955 she was awarded the gold Veitch medal of the Royal Horticultural Society. In her last decade she published a further biography, Daughter of France (1959) and a final novel, No Signposts in the Sea (1961). She died of cancer on June 2, 1962.
