LIVES OF HOUSES

Notable writers celebrate our fascination with the houses of famous literary figures, artists, composers, and politicians of the past. What can a house tell us about the person who lives there? Do we shape the buildings we live in, or are we formed by the places we call home, and why are we especially fascinated by the houses of the famous and often long-dead? We encounter W. H. Auden, living in joyful squalor in New York's St. Mark's Place, and W. B. Yeats in his flood-prone tower in the windswept West of Ireland. We meet Benjamin Disraeli, struggling to keep up appearances, and track the lost houses of Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen. We visit Benjamin Britten in Aldeburgh, and Jean Sibelius at Ainola, Finland. Featuring Alexandra Harris on moving house, Susan Walker on Morocco's ancient Roman House of Venus, Hermione Lee on biographical quests for writers' houses, Felicity James on William and Dorothy Wordsworth's Dove Cottage, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst at home with Tennyson, David Cannadine on Winston Churchill's dream house, Chartwell, Jenny Uglow on Edward Lear at San Remo's Villa Emily, Lucy Walker on Benjamin Britten at Aldeburgh, Rebecca Bullard on Samuel Johnson's houses, Laura Marcus on H. G. Wells at Uppark, Kate Kennedy on the mental asylums where World War I poet Ivor Gurney spent the last years of his life, Sandra Mayer on W. H. Auden's Austrian home, Julian Barnes on Jean Sibelius and Ainola. With more than 40 illustrations. Paperback, 304 pages. 13.34 x 2.54 x 20.32 cm.