HOUSE OF FICTION

Houses in literature have captured readers' imaginations for centuries, from Gothic castles to Georgian stately homes, Bloomsbury townhouses and high-rise penthouses. Step on to a tour of real and imagined houses that great English writers have used to reflect the themes of their novels. Many of these houses became like characters themselves, embodiments of the social and historical currents of their time. From the fantasy of Walpole's Otranto to post-modern takes on the country house by Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan, Virginia Woolf's love of Talland House in Cornwall is palpable in 'To the Lighthouse', just as London's Bloomsbury is ever-present in Mrs Dalloway. E. M. Forster's childhood home at Rook's Nest mirrors the idyllic charm of Howards End. Evelyn Waugh plotted Charles Ryder's return to Brideshead while a guest at Madresfield. Jane Austen was no stranger to a manor house or a good ballroom and is found drinking 'too much wine' in the lavish ballroom of a Hampshire manor. But the English country house from the idyllic to the unloved is discovered using historic sources, authors' biographies, letters, news accounts and the novels themselves and how some of the most influential houses in Britain are seen through the stories they inspired. A formidable amount of research has gone into this work which was selected as one of The Times Books of the Year 2017. 460pp, illustrated paperback.