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The Long Weekend
- Life in the English Country House, 1918-1939
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
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The Long Weekend
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Publisher's summary
As World War I drew to a close, change reverberated through the halls of England's country homes. As the sun set slowly on the British Empire, the shadows lengthened on the lawns of a thousand stately homes. In The Long Weekend, historian Adrian Tinniswood introduces us to the tumultuous, scandalous, and glamorous history of English country houses during the years between world wars. As estate taxes and other challenges forced many of these venerable houses onto the market, new sectors of British and American society were seduced by the dream of owning a home in the English countryside. Drawing on thousands of memoirs, letters, and diaries as well as the eyewitness testimonies of belted earls and bibulous butlers, Tinniswood brings the stately homes of England to life as never before, opening the door to a world by turns opulent and ordinary, noble and vicious, and forever wrapped in myth. Through the glitz of estate parties, the social tensions between old money and new, the hunting parties, illicit trysts, and grand feasts, Tinniswood offers a glimpse behind the veil of these great estates - and reveals a reality much more riveting than the dream.
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- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 419
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 375
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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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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
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 670
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 572
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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
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Bondfide Valuable History Lesson
- By A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. on 09-21-18
By: Anne de Courcy
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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
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 91
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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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George and Marina
- Duke and Duchess of Kent
- By: Christopher Warwick
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 82
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4 out of 5 stars 68
For eight brief years, before he was tragically killed in a mysterious air crash during the Second World War, Prince George, Duke of Kent, son of King George V and Queen Mary, and his beautiful wife, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, were the British monarchy's - indeed, high society's - most glamorous royal couple; and as golden royal icons, they are still remembered.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Engaging
- By Jean on 06-02-17
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Wait for Me!
- Memoirs
- By: Deborah Mitford Duchess of Devonshire
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 120
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 87
Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, is the youngest of the famously witty brood that includes the writers Jessica and Nancy, who wrote when Deborah was born, "How disgusting of the poor darling to go and be a girl." Deborah's effervescent memoir chronicles her remarkable life, from an eccentric but happy childhood in the Oxfordshire countryside, to tea with Adolf Hitler and her controversially political sister Unity in 1937, to her marriage to the second son of the Duke of Devonshire.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The last of the Mitford Sisters
- By Irene on 01-11-11
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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
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 237
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 215
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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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Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey
- The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle
- By: The Countess of Carnarvon
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 786
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 699
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Story4 out of 5 stars 693
Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey tells the story behind Highclere Castle, the real-life inspiration and setting for Julian Fellowes's Emmy Award-winning PBS series, and the life of one of its most famous inhabitants: Lady Almina, the fifth Countess of Carnarvon. Drawing on a rich store of materials from the archives of Highclere Castle, including diaries, letters, and photographs, the current Lady Carnarvon has written a transporting story of this fabled home on the brink of war.
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4 out of 5 stars
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the lowdown on Downton times
- By connie on 03-17-12
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Empty Mansions
- The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
- By: Bill Dedman, Paul Clark Newell Jr.
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,429
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,234
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,237
When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly 60 years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the 19th century with a 21st-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating, But Know This...
- By Karen K on 04-08-15
By: Bill Dedman, and others
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Behind the Throne
- A Domestic History of the British Royal Household
- By: Adrian Tinniswood
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 14 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 216
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 196
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Story4 out of 5 stars 195
In Behind the Throne, historian Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the reality of five centuries of life at the English court, taking the listener on a remarkable journey from one Queen Elizabeth to another and exploring life as it was lived by clerks and courtiers and clowns and crowned heads: the power struggles and petty rivalries, the tension between duty and desire, the practicalities of cooking dinner for thousands and of ensuring the king always won when he played a game of tennis.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very Worthwhile
- By G. Cole on 12-13-18
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The President's House
- A First Daughter Shares the History and Secrets of the World's Most Famous Home
- By: Margaret Truman
- Narrated by: Sandra Burr
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
As Margaret Truman knows from firsthand experience, living in the White House can be exhilarating and maddening, alarming and exhausting, but it is certainly never dull. Part private residence, part goldfish bowl, and part national shrine, the White House is both the most important address in America and the most intensely scrutinized.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Awesome History!
- By LisaB on 02-18-20
By: Margaret Truman
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Bunny Mellon
- The Life of an American Style Legend
- By: Meryl Gordon
- Narrated by: Vanessa Cortland
- Length: 17 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 436
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 383
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 383
A new biography of Bunny Mellon, the style icon and American aristocrat who designed the White House Rose Garden for her friend JFK and served as a living witness to 20th century American history, operating in the high-level arenas of politics, diplomacy, art, and fashion.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well written bio.
- By Minda Leah Kahn on 09-01-18
By: Meryl Gordon
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Black Diamonds
- The Downfall of an Aristocratic Dynasty and the Fifty Years That Changed England
- By: Catherine Bailey
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 62
When the sixth Earl Fitzwilliam died in 1902, he left behind the second largest estate in 20th-century England, valued at more than three billion dollars in today's money - a lifeline to the tens of thousands of people who worked either in the family's coal mines or on their expansive estate. The earl also left behind four sons, and the family line seemed assured. But was it?
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3 out of 5 stars
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Could use a good editor...
- By Phyllis on 04-30-18
By: Catherine Bailey
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The Mistresses of Cliveden
- Three Centuries of Scandal, Power, and Intrigue in an English Stately Home
- By: Natalie Livingstone
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Knowelden
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 141
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 124
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Story4 out of 5 stars 122
Overlooking the Thames, the Cliveden mansion is flanked by two wings and surrounded by lavish gardens. Throughout its storied history, Cliveden has been a setting for misbehavior, intrigue, and passion - from its salacious, deadly beginnings in the 17th century to the 1960s Profumo affair, the sex scandal that toppled the British government. Now, in this immersive chronicle, the manor's current mistress, Natalie Livingstone, opens the doors to this prominent house and lets the walls do the talking.
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2 out of 5 stars
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disappointed
- By Galina M. on 11-14-16
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The Glitter and the Gold
- The American Duchess - In Her Own Words
- By: Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 153
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 136
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Story4 out of 5 stars 137
Consuelo Vanderbilt was young, beautiful and the heir to a vast family fortune. She was also deeply in love with an American suitor when her mother chose instead for her to fulfill her social ambitions and marry an English Duke. Leaving her life in America, she came to England as the Duchess of Marlborough in 1895 and took up residence in her new home: Blenheim Palace. The ninth Duchess gives unique first-hand insight into life at the very pinnacle of English society in the Edwardian era.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Facinating Story- Terrible reading
- By Ashley D on 03-27-14
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Royal Sisters
- Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret
- By: Anne Edwards
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 143
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 124
In Royal Sisters, Anne Edwards, author of the best-selling Vivien Leigh: A Biography and Matriarch: Queen Mary and the House of Windsor, has written the first dual biography of Elizabeth, the princess who was to become Queen, and her younger sister, Margaret, who was to be her subject. From birth to maturity, they were the stuff of which dreams are made.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Where's The Rest?
- By Simone on 12-19-17
By: Anne Edwards
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Those Wild Wyndhams
- Three Sisters at the Heart of Power
- By: Claudia Renton
- Narrated by: Claudia Renton
- Length: 15 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 119
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 104
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 104
They were confidantes to British prime ministers, poets, writers, and artists, their lives entwined with the most celebrated and scandalous figures of the day, from Oscar Wilde to Henry James. They were the lovers of great men - or men of great prominence... They lived in a world of luxurious excess, a world of splendor at 44 Belgrave Square and later at the even more vast Clouds, the exquisite Wiltshire house on 4,000 acres, the "house of the age", designed in 1876 by the visionary architect Philip Webb - the model for Henry James' The Spoils of Poynton.
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5 out of 5 stars
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SLOW START BUT STICK WITH THIS ONE
- By The Louligan on 01-22-19
By: Claudia Renton
What listeners say about The Long Weekend
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- D. Ollero
- 11-08-21
Didn’t like it at first
I didn’t like the beginning of this, and I wanted to return it, but I couldn’t. I made myself start to listen and by the end I found that I enjoyed it very much.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- K. Holm
- 09-09-17
primarily a book of architecture
A very misleading title as very little of county life and tradition is described. Disappointing.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Eileen
- 08-06-17
Not What I Thought I Was
The first chapter delivers on the promise of an excellent idea- and then the book wanders off into a plodding list of lost properties. Informational if you can sit through it, otherwise an excellent sleep aid
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Shawn Humphrey
- 09-19-18
Informational but a little dry at times
This snapshot of English country life, at times, demonstrates the wit and scandal fans of Gosford Park and Downton Abbey may expect. But at times it runs dry as a recitation of several example great houses emphasizing a point. When the book focuses on a single great estate or family it's at its strongest.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Robert
- 11-16-19
Not about weekends
As other reviewers have stated, it is not about long weekends, but it is more about architecture and the selling off of country houses. Bot what it is advertised to be.
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3 people found this helpful