Bad Manors
Updated: 7 days ago
Susannah Walker
March 2027
9781917569354
Demy Hardback, 272pp
Price: £16.99
A personal, polemical and provocative look at England’s fascination with its grand country estates
In Bad Manors: An Alternative History of the Stately Home, Susannah Walker tours some of England’s most iconic country estates, celebrated for centuries as symbols of beauty and national identity. From Wilton and Blenheim to Holkham, Chatsworth and Stourhead, she asks what these displays of wealth and power really tell us about England.
Blending history, reportage and witty observation, Walker exposes how public money safeguards aristocratic privilege, and how the institutions that preserve these homes use careful curation to offer an imaginary ‘authenticity’. She challenges the notion that these properties need the descendants of their founding families in residence to retain their ‘soul’.
But why are we attracted to them? What does our fascination with grand houses and blue-blooded lives reveal? Bad Manors asks who gets to shape our national heritage – and whose history is left outside the door.
Author
Susannah Walker studied English Literature at Cambridge followed by Design History at the Royal College of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum. She has published three non-fiction books on design, and runs a vintage poster blog and website about post-war graphic design and history. She has also lectured on posters and designers at places such as the National Army Museum and the Marks & Spencer Archive.