Don't be put off at first by the black and white photos. This book has some color photos, and I was at first hesitant to purchase this book because it seemed to be mostly black and white photography.
However, once I began to read this book, all thoughts about photos went out of my head! This book is informative, intelligent and thorough. The author has studied his subject very well, and writes in a clear and easy to follow manner. I really do find the floorplans to be an invaluable tool towards understanding the buildings the author is describing.
I am currently using this book as a research tool for my novel, but I did buy this book just for the love of the subject and I was not disappointed.
I would recommend this book again and again to anyone with a love of history and architecture.

Mark Girouard, an architectural historian, has traced the roles of form and function in England's Great Houses in this densely illustrated, sensitively written book. Floor-plans, innumerable photographs and drawings (many of homes now destroyed), and portraits pepper the text, which is readability itself.

The book follows a chronological path from the Mediaval Household to the present day. The text isn't dry at all. Delicious details abound: Bess of Hardwick pacing her Great Chamber of Hardwick Hall, waiting for the royal visit that never came in the instantly-dated house she'd built for this very purpose, ... The origin of the phrase "backstairs intrigues" (both political and sexual).... the slow but persistant birth of the aristocratic ideal of "privacy"--and how it affected dining halls....the rise of the great dilettante libraries (and the rooms to house them).....and the advent of the freakish innovation of indoor plumbing (and a picture of the Duke of Wellington's elaborate WC) are just a few tidbits.

Mr. Girouard doesn't neglect the "downstairs" portion of a Great House, because he's interested in the whole institution as a functioning unit. Some of the most intriguing photos are of beloved servants' portraits, and the almost Shaker-like beauty of a working kitchen or laundry. Included, also, is a printed "Summary of Livery Men's Duties, Etc., Etc.", of Hatfield House, and darned if it doesn't sound like instructions for empoyees at an indifferent New York hotel!

This book is a delicious retrospective, and will make any red-blooded Anglophile who longs for one of these faded leviathans very happy indeed. Now, if you need me further, I will be in the Orangery.

Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History is not about cities throughout the world, it does not begin with the start of urbanization thousands of years ago, nor does it examine any one city from its origin to the present. Instead the book is a social-architectural history of European urbanization over the past thousand years. The last century and a half occurs in the U.S. The story never lingers long on any city, but shifts as changes in transportation, manufacturing and commerce alter the leading edge of urban development. What Cities and People does do, it does superbly well. Its large format (8x11) and glossy paper with pictures on nearly every page make this book a pleasure to read and view. The hundreds of reproductions of paintings, drawings, and maps plus numerous pictures of surviving building bring to life the story presented in the text. The focus on building and other structures is not on architecture as such, but on structures as physical manifestations of and clues to urban life, the work and leisure of people. The book enables readers to begin "seeing" the past in surviving landscape features. The author's graceful and confident writing style nicely complements the well-chosen graphics and makes this book a most informative and enjoyable read.

What a delightful surprise to learn that Mark Girouard has written about France. I have enjoyed his books about English houses and towns for years -- returned to them again and again. His new book on the French country house has delighted me with the same mix of historical knowledge with social insight and architectural connoisseurship. All his books are full of the most interesting insights and details, and he writes like and angel. Nice pictures too. (My only wish is for more pictures, plans and diagrams.) This books is a lovely equal to his "Life in the English Country House."