Describes the career of the seventeenth-century British architect, looks at his designs for rural mansions and castles, and discusses his contributions to their interior decoration.

"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...

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

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.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, England was witness to a fascinating phenomenon: the revival of the medieval code of chivalry. The adaptation of these ideals as an appropriate mode of behavior for contemporary gentlemen was reflected not only in the art and culture of the period, but in its intellectual and political life as well. Mark Girouard traces the impact of the revival of chivalry in all its various aspects including politics, sport,...