Christopher Ridgway – författare

Official illustrated guide to Britain’s finest country house.Castle Howard is often said to be Britain’s most sublime country house, recognised worldwide as the location for Brideshead Revisited and Bridgerton. Its setting in Yorkshire is amongst the most spectacular of any building in the UK.Christopher Ridgway, curator at Castle Howard, explores its history and takes the reader on an illustrated tour of the house and its equally magnificent park and grounds. Sumptuous new interior photography by Chris Horwood, following a restoration of the house, brings to life such treasures as the chapel decoration by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones and paintings by Reynolds and Gainsborough, while Nick Howard's evocative outdoor photographs include the extraordinary family Mausoleum and Temple of the Four Winds in the grounds.Castle Howard was created by Charles Howard, the 3rd Earl of Carlisle, and designed by his two principal architects, Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor. It took shape in the first decade of the 18th century, with later additions, and has been the residence of the Howard family ever since. Today it is one of the glories of Britain and one of its favourite visitor attractions, and this book is the ideal introduction to it.

Sir John Vanbrugh is celebrated today as one of England's finest country house architects. His masterpieces include palatial private homes such as Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, greatly admired by any enthusiast of English Baroque architecture. However, his work extended far beyond such projects, and included a remarkable variety of temples, belvederes, pyramids and many other features which he designed for the gardens and parks of the estates at which he worked.The originality of such work has shown that Vanbrugh played a crucial role in the development of the eighteenth-century English garden, and this unique and fascinating book uses the fruits of new research to assess just what contribution this great man made to our heritage.

In the thirty-five years since the publication of David Cannadine’s Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (1990) the power of Britain’s landed elite declined, but they remain far from extinct. One-third of Britain’s land still belongs to the aristocracy. Moreover, partly inspired by Cannadine’s book, we now know much more about the ways in which the aristocracy established their hold on modernity, and how they have lasted so long. Many key questions remain. How much was this a distinctively British story, to what extent were things different in Scotland, Wales and Ireland? Does ‘decline and fall’ accurately describe what happened to landed elites in other countries, particularly in western Europe, or amongst assimilated elites such as Jews? Was the ‘soft’ power of the aristocracy – their role in the arts, philanthropy and higher education – as significant as their political and economic sway? How dependent on the colonies, and also the USA, were the British aristocracy for their wealth in the first place, and how did their role overseas change their profile at home? This volume brings together a wide-ranging group of scholars to explore The Decline and Fall, developing its themes in new ways, and investigating other aspects for the first time.