The Edwardian Country House (HB) - Tapa dura

The Edwardian Country House is another living experiment from the makers of the 1900 House and The 1940s House. The Edwardian Country House follows a team of volunteers and a modern family who turn back the clock to recreate life as it was for the upper classes and their servants in a country house in 1910. It will tell the story, over three summer months, of an old-fashioned way of life that is quintessentially English: a glorious country manor, tea and croquet on the lawn, a patrician butler and a stable full of horses. But this picturesque historical tableau is of a group of people utterly divided and ruled by class. Do their ostensibly old-fashioned issues of money, power, and above all, class, still plague Britain today? This will be a major series and a high-profile book.

"The Edwardian Country House" gives an insight into the romance and reality of Edwardian society and evokes the "golden" years before World War I. In this illustrated book, Juliet Gardiner explores the key events in the social calendar of a wealthy Edwardian family - a fancy dress ball, a society dinner party, a village fete, a musical evening, a shooting party - from not only the points of view of the family, but also from that of the servants. Detailed descriptions of the day-to-day activities involved in running a country house are told through diary extracts, letters, advice manuals and recipes, while special craft features enable readers to create a range of authentic Edwardian delights for themselves. Providing a look at a period that was glorious for a few but certainly not all, this is a book on Edwardian life as seen through 21st-century eyes.