Mark Girouard

Geschiedenis en ontwikkeling van steden in de westerse wereld van de tiende tot in de twintigste eeuw.

"In-depth look at thirty individual houses" ... "built as the centres of sizeable country estates"--Preface.

"'Queen Anne' was more than a style of architecture: its influence can be traced in furniture, pictures and decorations of the period, in children's books such as Kate Greenaway's, and in the revival of the 'old-fashioned' garden. In this book, Mark Girouard describes the 'Queen Anne' movement in all its manifestations, tracing its origin in the 1860s the spread of its subsequent vogue from London to the provinces, and from England to America, and its fall from grace in the 1890s, when it was taken up the architects of pubs and waterside villas. In doing so he does more than chart the style for the first time: he also throws light on an important segment of English life in the last decades of the nineteenth century."--back cover.

"Life in the French Country House is a perceptive and witty account of the French upper classes at home, showing how their way of life and its setting of the chateaux, manoirs and gentilhommeries of the French countryside - evolved through the centuries, inextricably linked together, to create a society admired and emulated throughout Europe." "This book is concerned not just with the variety, wealth and beauty of the chateaux themselves, but with how they reflected in their interior decoration and organization the manners and mores of their occupants - how the different rooms were lived in, how the French lifestyle changed over the decades, and how the design and decoration of the buildings developed to accommodate it."--BOOK JACKET.

"Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture - not the friendly unassuming architecture of the vernacular but the uniquely strange and exciting buildings put up by the great and powerful, ranging from huge houses to gem-like pavilions and lodges designed for feasting and hunting - is a phenomenon as remarkable as the literature which accompanied it, the literature of Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Marlow, Jonson, Campion and others. Forty years after adventuring into this world in his first book, 'Robert Smythson', in which he discussed one family of mason-architects and the great houses with which they were connected, Mark Girouard has returned to the subject to cover the whole rich field in detail.^ In this beautiful and fascinating book, Girouard discusses social structure and the way of life behind it, the evolution of the house plan, the ferment of excitement aroused in English patrons and craftsmen as they learnt about the classic Five Orders and the buildings of Ancient Rome from publications and engravings, the surprising wealth of architectural drawings which survive from the period, the inroads of foreign craftsmen who brought new fashions in ornament with them, but also the strength of the native tradition which was creatively integrated with the 'antique' style. Behind the book is a vivid consciousness of the European scene, and the different ways in which different countries reacted to new influences yet did not abandon their native traditions. Italy, France, central Europe and above all the Low Countries provide the background, and England was influenced by all of them. But the principal argument of the book is the individuality of the English achievement.^ Girouard's pioneering work on Elizabethan architecture, then an unfashionable period, has helped inspire an increasing number of architectural historians to venture into the field. His new book benefits from their researches and publications, but is essentially a product of new research and travel on his part. The results are displayed with his own unique sense of style, and are fired by the excitement which the architecture of the period still generates in him."--Jacket.

From literature, social chronicles, and family documents comes a study of the evolution and social role of the English country house since the Middle Ages.

Traces the development of English towns and cities through the centuries.

This social and aesthetic history of the world's major cities from antiquity to the present focuses on crucial periods of the cities' past and examines their architecture in light of the men and women who used it.