If your interest is the Herefordshire aspect of this one, I would say steer clear- it doesn't give anywhere near enough sadly. For younger bookworms – and nostalgic older ones too – there’s the Slightly Foxed Cubs series, in which we’ve reissued a number of classic nature and historical novels. He has also been interviewed about the book by Michael Portillo on Times Radio and by Georgina Godwin for Monocle 24, as well as by the BBC local radio in Hereford and Worcester, Cornwall and Gloucestershire. Corvus Atlantic’s commercial fiction list which includes women’s, historical, romance, sci-fi, crime and thriller.

As Gavin traced Stepps House through various hands and eras, he saw the picture of a past emerge that resonates powerfully with our present. With passion and precision, Gavin Plumley pushes the boundaries of memoir and scholarship and shows that the chronicle of a house can contain the grand history of a whole world as well as the sweet, urgent story of a life: all that intimacy within the vastness of historical time. As Gavin traced Stepps House through various hands and eras, he uncovers a past steeped in history and art, memory and nature that resonates powerfully with our present. The book is supposed to be about the history of a house in Pembridge, Herefordshire, (near where I live), that the author bought with his husband, according to the blurb and insinuated by the title and dust wrapper illustration, but the information assembled is so meagre that, I’m afraid, I felt that I had been conned.Engrossingly fusing domestic history, memoir and art, Gavin Plumley’s A Home for All Seasons tells the fascinating story of a couple’s journey of discovering the full past of their ancient Herefordshire house. What starts out as a straightforward house history morphs into something else, a wide-ranging meditation on place and past, taking in climate change, rural depopulation, the Reformation and folklore. His writing style is also top tier: the book is written in a way that is at once conversational, poetic and intellectual. We get a little of the history of Stepps House in Pembridge but then are too many "filler" sections, presumably to pad out the word count.

A hybrid work of domestic history and European art, of memoir and landscape, A Home for All Seasons is both grand in its sweep and intimate in its account of life on the edge of England. The perfect Christmas present for anyone who has ever been curious about the house they live in and who might (or might not) have lived there before them. Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy. The result of his labours is a fascinating comparison of the 16th and 21st centuries, not the least of which is the plague and its more modern equivalent. This was particularly shown in the art of the time which was influenced by the more sophisticated European styles and techniques.A work of non-fiction, it was published by Atlantic Books in hardback and e-book on 2 June 2022 to wide acclaim and then released as an audiobook by W. You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. I really hate giving up on books I start reading, especially expensive hardback books like this one, but after persevering for days, I started skimming for information on the purported subject without luck and decided I’d wasted enough of my life on it.

I listened to the audible audio edition but it isn't on Goodreads yet and I can't find the asin number to add it. As a final thought, while I was reading this the author posted a comment by a reviewer that said they weren’t able to continue reading the book due to the prevalence of references to his alternative lifestyle.There were moments which felt “socially preachy” and I find that annoying, especially when I already feel that the book was misrepresented to me.