A Home for All Seasons

Product Information

If I’m honest, the art history was less interesting to me than the social history aspect of the book, but it has inspired me to take more interest in historical detail and the bibliography included will be invaluable for this.

It’s rare that non-fiction has the power to transport you so completely and catch you up in a world that you have never known, and that you never want to leave. The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time. 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.

If your interest is the Herefordshire aspect of this one, I would say steer clear- it doesn't give anywhere near enough sadly. 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.

You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. 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.

Afew years ago, Gavin Plumley and his husband, Alastair, bought a house in the Herefordshire village of Pembridge. He has also been interviewed about the book by Michael Portillo on Times Radio and by Georgina Godwin for Monocle 24, as well as by the BBC local radio in Hereford and Worcester, Cornwall and Gloucestershire. It had some interesting details but I didn't enjoy Gavin reading it as there was no shading in his narration.

This was particularly shown in the art of the time which was influenced by the more sophisticated European styles and techniques. Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy. 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’. I really hate giving up on books I start reading, especially expensive hardback books like this one, but after persevering for days, I started skimming for information on the purported subject without luck and decided I’d wasted enough of my life on it. Slightly Foxed brings back forgotten voices through its Slightly Foxed and Plain Foxed Editions, a series of beautifully produced little pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them absorbing and highly individual.

As Gavin traced Stepps House through various hands and eras, he saw a past emerge that resonates powerfully with our present.

A hybrid work of domestic history and European art, of memoir and landscape, A Home for All Seasons is both grand in its sweep and intimate in its account of life on the edge of England.As Gavin traced Stepps House through various hands and eras, he saw the picture of a past emerge that resonates powerfully with our present.