Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire

In the decades before the First World War, the owners of the nation’s stately homes reveled in a golden age of glamour where privilege and hedonism went hand-in-hand with duty and honour. At a time when Britain ruled over a quarter of the worlds’ population, privileged few lived in ancestral stately country homes encumbered by history. However, by the end of the 19th century, members of the elite and landed gentry found themselves living in the company of arrivistes. Their new neighbors—from chorus girls to millionaire greengrocers to guano impresarios—were unencumbered by the weight of tradition. They used their “new money” to bring innovations to the country house, affecting every aspect of life, from the kitchen to the drawing room. In a fascinating prequel to his lecture and best-seller The Long Weekend, Adrian Tinniswood OBE will speak about life in the English country house and describe how the self-made millionaires turned that traditional world upside down—bringing automobiles and labour-saving devices to mansions that had been standing virtually unchanged for generations. He will explore the impact of new technologies on both old homes and old owners. Could the romance of the past exist alongside the shock of the new? While electric light and bathrooms with hot and cold running water might have made things easier both above and below stairs, it still could not quite banish the ghosts of the past. Professor Tinniswood will explain that the period before the horrors of the Great War was indeed a golden age for the British country house, but not for the reasons we might expect.

Adrian Tinniswood, OBE

Adrian Tinniswood OBE FSA, studied English and Philosophy at Southampton University and was awarded an MPhil at Leicester University. He has acted as a consultant to the National Trust and the Heritage Lottery Fund. He is currently Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Buckingham and Visiting Fellow in Heritage and History at Bath Spa University. He has lectured at several Universities in both the United Kingdom and United States, including the University of Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of 16 books on architectural and social history including His Invention So Fertile: A Life of Christopher Wren; By Permission of Heaven: The True Story of the Great Fire of London; The Verneys, Pirates of Barbary; The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars; Behind the Throne: A Domestic History of the Royal Household (2018). Tinniswood was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to heritage.

Tickets: $15 members*; $25 non-members

*Membership discount applied automatically when logged into your Royal-Oak.org account