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Noble Ambitions
- The Fall and Rise of the English Country House After World War II
- Narrated by: Roger May
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
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Noble Ambitions
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Publisher's summary
A rollicking tour of the English country home after World War II, when swinging London collided with aristocratic values.
As the sun set slowly on the British Empire, its mansions fell and rose. Ancient families were reduced to demolishing the parts of their stately homes they could no longer afford, dukes and duchesses desperately clung to their ancestral seats, and a new class of homeowners bought their way into country life. A delicious romp, Noble Ambitions pulls us into these crumbling halls of power, leading us through the juiciest bits of postwar aristocratic history - from Mick Jagger dancing at deb balls to the scandals of Princess Margaret. Capturing the spirit of the age, historian Adrian Tinniswood proves that the country house is not only an iconic symbol, but a lens through which to understand the shifting fortunes of the British elite in an era of monumental social change.
Critic reviews
"Erudite and delightfully gossipy.”—Wall Street Journal
"Tinniswood [is] an erudite historian of country-house life in all its anecdote-worthy vagaries.”—Financial Times
"If you’re still mourning the end of ‘Downton Abbey,’ this book, charting the rise and fall of the English country house, is most definitely the book for you. A lively history of post-World War II England as told through its grandest estates and ancestral seats.”—New York Post
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 419
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 375
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 376
From the Gilded Age until 1914, more than 100 American heiresses invaded Britannia and swapped dollars for titles - just like Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, the first of the Downton Abbey characters Julian Fellowes was inspired to create after reading To Marry An English Lord. Filled with vivid personalities, gossipy anecdotes, grand houses, and a wealth of period details-plus quotes and the finer points of Victorian and Edwardian etiquette - To Marry An English Lord is social history at its liveliest and most accessible.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not Great on Audio
- By Lynne on 03-10-16
By: Gail MacColl, and others
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"Our Crowd"
- The Great Jewish Families of New York
- By: Stephen Birmingham
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 19 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 300
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 259
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 258
They immigrated to America from Germany in the nineteenth century with names like Loeb, Sachs, Seligman, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. From tenements on the Lower East Side to Park Avenue mansions, this handful of Jewish families turned small businesses into imposing enterprises and amassed spectacular fortunes. But despite possessing breathtaking wealth that rivaled the Astors and Rockefellers, they were barred by the gentile establishment from the lofty realm of "the 400," a register of New York's most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Finance heavy
- By Shayla on 03-28-21
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The Last Castle
- The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home
- By: Denise Kiernan
- Narrated by: Denise Kiernan
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 939
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 832
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 828
Orphaned at a young age, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser claimed lineage from one of New York's best known families. She grew up in Newport and Paris, and her engagement and marriage to George Vanderbilt was one of the most watched events of Gilded Age society. But none of this prepared her to be mistress of Biltmore House. Before their marriage, the wealthy and bookish Vanderbilt had dedicated his life to creating a spectacular European-style estate on 125,000 acres of North Carolina wilderness.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Very factual
- By Jennifer on 11-28-17
By: Denise Kiernan
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The Plaza
- The Secret Life of America's Most Famous Hotel
- By: Julie Satow
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 286
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 252
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 252
The Plaza is the account of one vaunted New York City address that has become synonymous with wealth and scandal, opportunity and tragedy. With glamour on the surface and strife behind the scenes, it is the story of how one hotel became a mirror reflecting New York's place at the center of the country's cultural narrative for over a century.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Don't need your politics, Julie
- By Debra Noe on 03-29-20
By: Julie Satow
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The Husband Hunters
- American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy
- By: Anne de Courcy
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 670
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 572
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 569
Towards the end of the 19th century and for the first few years of the 20th, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege, and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, 50 years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known "Dollar Princess", married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage....
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Bondfide Valuable History Lesson
- By A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. on 09-21-18
By: Anne de Courcy
-
The Rothschilds
- A Family Portrait
- By: Frederic Morton
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 95
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 85
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 85
No family in the past two centuries has been as constantly at the center of Europe's great events, has featured such varied and spectacular personalities, has had anything close to the wealth of the Rothschilds. To this day they remain one of the most powerful and wealthy families in the world. In Frederic Morton's classic tale, the family is brought vividly to life.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Engaging read but dubious sentiment
- By Amazon Customer on 04-23-20
By: Frederic Morton
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The Riviera Set
- Glitz, Glamour, and the Hidden World of High Society
- By: Mary S. Lovell
- Narrated by: Jill Rolls
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 105
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 91
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 90
The Riviera Set reveals the story of the group of people who lived, partied, bed-hopped, and politicked at the Château de l'Horizon near Cannes, over the course of 40 years from the time when Coco Chanel made southern French tans fashionable in the twenties to the death of the playboy Prince Aly Khan in 1960. At the heart of dynamic group was the amazing Maxine Elliott, the daughter of a fisherman from Connecticut, who built the beautiful art deco Château.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Riviera Set
- By Lois Kelly on 05-04-18
By: Mary S. Lovell
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The Queen and Di
- The Untold Story
- By: Ingrid Seward
- Narrated by: Emily Gray
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 138
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 119
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 122
The Manchester Evening News declared, it took "a biographer like Ingrid Seward to unleash a sober, challenging glimpse into the one relationship of such scrutiny." That relationship is the complex, troubled, and often turbulent association between Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Quite one sided.
- By Beatnik RN on 02-17-15
By: Ingrid Seward
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Vanderbilt
- The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
- By: Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
- Narrated by: Anderson Cooper
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 5,519
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,790
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 4,763
New York Times best-selling author and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with New York Times best-selling historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty - his mother’s family, the Vanderbilts.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting Approach to a Well Known History
- By HistoryNerd on 09-24-21
By: Anderson Cooper, and others
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"The Rest of Us"
- The Rise of America's Eastern European Jews
- By: Stephen Birmingham
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
The wave of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who swept into New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by way of Ellis Island were not welcomed by the Jews who had arrived decades before. These refugees from czarist Russia and the Polish shtetls who came to America to escape pogroms and persecution were considered barbaric, uneducated, and too steeped in the traditions of the "old country" to be accepted by the more refined and already well-established German-Jewish community. But the new arrivals were tough, passionate, and determined.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Book 3 of 3
- By Etoile NEOhio on 11-15-22
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Nazi Wives
- The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany
- By: James Wyllie
- Narrated by: Dalya Raphael
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 165
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 142
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 141
Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann - names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margarete, Lina, Ilse, and Gerda. These are the women behind the infamous men - complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families, and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Scary
- By Three River on 05-15-21
By: James Wyllie
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Fortune's Children
- The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt
- By: Arthur T. Vanderbilt II
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 803
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 719
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 715
Written by descendant Arthur T. Vanderbilt II, Fortune's Children traces the dramatic and amazingly colorful history of this great American family, from the rise of industrialist and philanthropist Cornelius Vanderbilt to the fall of his progeny - wild spendthrifts whose profligacy bankrupted a vast inheritance.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Rise and Fall of the Gilded Age
- By Hilary on 10-22-14
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The Housekeeper's Tale
- The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House
- By: Tessa Boase
- Narrated by: Tessa Boase
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 237
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 215
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 213
The Housekeeper's Tale reveals the personal sacrifices, bitter disputes and driving ambition that shaped these women's careers. Using secret diaries, unpublished letters, and the neglected service archives of our stately homes, Tessa Boase tells the extraordinary stories of five working women who ran some of Britain's most prominent households.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Utterly intriguing
- By Pamela Jane on 09-14-17
By: Tessa Boase
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Broken Glass
- Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight Over a Modernist Masterpiece
- By: Alex Beam
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 73
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 56
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
In 1945, Edith Farnsworth asked the German architect Mies van der Rohe, already renowned for his avant-garde buildings, to design a weekend home for her outside of Chicago. Edith was a woman ahead of her time—unmarried, she was a distinguished medical researcher, as well as an accomplished violinist, translator, and poet. The two quickly began spending weekends together, talking philosophy, Catholic mysticism, and, of course, architecture over wine-soaked picnic lunches.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Tedious and disappointing
- By Deborah McGarr Hutchins on 02-03-23
By: Alex Beam
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Lady in Waiting
- My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown
- By: Anne Glenconner
- Narrated by: Anne Glenconner
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,977
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,706
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,682
Anne Glenconner has been at the center of the royal circle from childhood, when she met and befriended the future Queen Elizabeth II and her sister, the Princess Margaret. Though the firstborn child of the fifth Earl of Leicester, who controlled one of the largest estates in England, as a daughter she was deemed "the greatest disappointment" and unable to inherit. Since then she has needed all her resilience to survive court life with her sense of humor intact.
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1 out of 5 stars
-
Horrible Reading
- By Teddy hall on 03-27-20
By: Anne Glenconner
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What listeners say about Noble Ambitions
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Peter W.
- 11-12-21
Story could be told in a 10th of the time
I didn’t finish. The subject is interesting to me but the story is drawn out with the details of the history of just a few houses. I just got bored.
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