Adrian Tinniswood, Author and Professor of English Social History at the University of Buckingham
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the owners of Britain’s stately homes revelled in a golden age of glory and glamour. Nothing lay beyond their reach in a world where privilege and hedonism went hand in hand with duty and honour. A world in which the ancestral seats of ancient nobility stood side by side with the fabulous palaces of Jewish bankers and Indian princes, a world in which dukes and duchesses mixed with aristocratic society hostesses who had learned to dance in the chorus line and self-made millionaires who had been raised in the slums of Manchester and Birmingham.
The Power and the Glory explores the country house during this golden age, when stately homes were at their most opulent and when, for the privileged few, life in the country house was the best life of all.
Adrian Tinniswood OBE FSA is the author of eighteen books on architectural and social history, including e.g. Noble Ambitions: The Fall and Rise of the Post-War Country House, The House Party: A Short History of Leisure, Pleasure and the Country House Weekend, The Royal Society and the Invention of Modern Science, Daily Telegraph Science Book of the Year, Behind the Throne. A Domestic History of the British Royal Household, Daily Telegraph Book of the Year, The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars, Daily Telegraph Book of the Year, Guardian History Book of the Year, Sunday Times Bestseller, New York Times Bestseller.
He has worked with a number of heritage organizations including the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Trust, and is currently Professorial Research Fellow in History at the University of Buckingham and Adjunct Professor of History at Maynooth University.