A Home for All Seasons

Product Information

Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review. As Gavin traced Stepps House through various hands and eras, he saw a past emerge that resonates powerfully with our present. Afew years ago, Gavin Plumley and his husband, Alastair, bought a house in the Herefordshire village of Pembridge.

We get a little of the history of Stepps House in Pembridge but then are too many "filler" sections, presumably to pad out the word count. The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time. The book is supposed to be about the history of a house in Pembridge, Herefordshire, (near where I live), that the author bought with his husband, according to the blurb and insinuated by the title and dust wrapper illustration, but the information assembled is so meagre that, I’m afraid, I felt that I had been conned. J. Marsh, Judith O'Reilly, Kelly Clayton, Kim Nash, Leah Mercer, Liz Fenwick, Louise Jensen, Louise Mumford, Malcolm Hollingdrake, Marcia Woolf, Mark Stay, Marcie Steele, Natasha Bache, Nick Jackson, Nick Quantrill, Nicky Black, Patricia Gibney, Rachel Sargeant, Rob Parker, Rob Scragg, S. With ancient beams crossing the ceiling, the date they'd been given of 1800 seemed out by centuries.In fact, Pevsner, in a rare burst of enthusiasm, declared it to be one of the prettiest villages in the county, on account of its abundance of black-and-white buildings, ‘hardly disturbed by Georgian brick, though disastrously disturbed by some recent filling stations’. To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page. What starts out as a straightforward house history morphs into something else, a wide-ranging meditation on place and past, taking in climate change, rural depopulation, the Reformation and folklore .

This being said, lovely read but a bit of a long winded one, It could have been two books - The history of the house and the live of the author in my opinion. You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. The perfect Christmas present for anyone who has ever been curious about the house they live in and who might (or might not) have lived there before them. For younger bookworms – and nostalgic older ones too – there’s the Slightly Foxed Cubs series, in which we’ve reissued a number of classic nature and historical novels.Unfortunately, it veered away from that and turned into an odd sort of history of the English village and a discussion of one particular artist’s set of paintings. From a simple question about the age of a house, this book takes you on a much wider journey, encompassing art, literature, history and nature, as well as the inescapable fragility of life. Grove Press An imprint of Grove Atlantic, an American independent publisher, who publish in the UK through Atlantic Books. Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal.

He also delved extensively into the art of the Tudor period and came across the 16th century immigration issues. Corvus Atlantic’s commercial fiction list which includes women’s, historical, romance, sci-fi, crime and thriller.I listened to the audible audio edition but it isn't on Goodreads yet and I can't find the asin number to add it. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. Engrossingly fusing domestic history, memoir and art, Gavin Plumley’s A Home for All Seasons tells the fascinating story of a couple’s journey of discovering the full past of their ancient Herefordshire house. As Gavin traced Stepps House through various hands and eras, he uncovers a past steeped in history and art, memory and nature that resonates powerfully with our present. Working with several interlocking cycles chiefly the seasons in art, farming and Elizabethan England, this book is also an extended meditation on the big issues of today and their effects on village life.