Knole: A Private View of One of Britain's Great Houses

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Sumptuous photographs by designer Ashley Hicks who recently photographed the interiors of Buckingham Palace capture the smouldering spirit of Knole, from the state rooms, which house possibly the finest collection of royal Stuart furniture in the world, to the private apartments and gardens to the behind-the-scenes labyrinth of cellars and attics.

Knole provides a window onto English history. The characters who populate the pages the grave Elizabethan statesman, the good-for-nothing gadabout at the seedy court of James I, the dashing cavalier, the Restoration rake, the 3rd Duke of the ancien rgime are all representative of their eras (members of a family described by Vita Sackville-West as 'a race too prodigal, too amorous, too weak, too indolent, and too melancholy'). Vita's own disinheritance from Knole prompted her dear friend Virginia Woolf to pen Orlando, furthering the places fame and glamorous lustre.

Similarly, the architectural and decorative features of the house illustrate the different tastes of successive ages, from Thomas Sackvilles seventeenth-century makeover of a ramshackle medieval mansion to an early twentieth-century suite of rooms designed in the Bloomsbury style. Knole has never been illuminated in this way before.

Reviews

"This book is perfect for any Anglophile. Readers get a glimpse inside the 600-year-old Knole estate, a sprawling country house located in Kent, England, that began its life as an archbishops residence. Famed English decorator and photographer Ashley Hicks documents the houses many treasures with his astute designers eye."ELLEDECOR.COM

Author Bio

Robert Sackville-West, 7th Baron Sackville, studied history at Oxford University and went on to work in publishing. He now chairs Knole Estates, the property and investment company that, in parallel with the National Trust, runs the Sackville familys interests at Knole.

Ashley Hicks is a British author, architect, interior and furniture designer, and photographer.