showers regret and briddhead. In the initiation from 1959, he asked for having it \ "in the form of food and alcohol, and I now discovered it -not good. This excess was due to the wartime conditions in which the novel was written, he explained: "He could not have predicted, in the spring of 1944, the current cult of the English country house. Then he, such as the seat of the patriarchs who made up the main artistic elements of our country, will be ruined and miserable as a monastery in the 16th century. Therefore, I instead collected them, zealous for the truth.
He did indeed, honoring Brideshead for continuing ("Every year, generation after generation, they make it rich and spread it; every year, a great harvest of trees in the camp reached maturity"), criticizes Hooper, the local army chief. , because he dares to answer questions, as he and his soldiers began to search for Brideshead: "It doesn't seem logical - a family in a place like this. What is the point? "Eventually, the plans for the destruction of English country houses by violent criminals like Hooper did not happen, and Waugh was relieved and embarrassed to find that his novel had become a "panegyric" and an empty coffin. Despite the reconstruction it seems readers who liked the 1981 television series and the 2008 movie didn't see it.
That his novels are still popular more than half a century later would have surprised Waugh. He will be more than surprised to discover that novels set in English country houses are among the most popular books of recent years, including Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (1989) and Ian's Atonement (2001). ). ) and The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2009). The month comes bringing additional additions in the form, a new book of Allan Hollingh, to be placed in 3,000 acre in court. Here are traditional books, which set in different points of the last century, with 95 years of Hollingghurst at the 2008. Like Waugh's novels, they are also revealing about current affairs. And what they support is the continuing attraction of English country houses to readers. Although they have done good research to explain what is happening in the group or what has been happening in the past, none of the writers of this newspaper grew up in a rural home. If we are looking for knowledge, it would be better to read Snobs by Julian Fellowes (aka Baron Fellowes of West Stafford, author of Downton Abbey), or go to the National Trust or English Heritage . property, or watch Dan Cruickshank's TV series, The Country House Revealed, which takes us behind doors that are usually closed to the public. What attracts modern non-U writers to country houses is the opportunity they offer to make different types of workers - slaves and masters - under one house, to see how conflict begins, love begins in tragedy.
This tradition is reflected in the number of ancient so-called houses - Howards End, Waverley, Wuthering Heights, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, The Spoils of Poynton - not to mention the legendary houses made so memorable that they are in 'place among the nobles - Pemberley. (Mr. Darcy's House), Manderley (Max de Winter's House), Thornfield (Mr. Rochester's House), Baskerville Hall, etc. According to Mark Girouard in his book A Country House Companion, there is a myth surrounding English houses that hails them as "magical places" and their owners as wise stewards of the land. That, taking care of the landlords and their servants, putting them to work. live for public service, fill their galleries with beautiful pictures and their libraries with rare books. , and are very hospitable friends and guests. Predictably, the myth's most enthusiastic purveyors are the aristocrats themselves, who describe their homes not as monuments of power and wealth, but as embodiments of grace and nobility. . Wanting to establish democratic credentials, Vita Sackville-West shows her family home, Knole, not as a huge pile - 365 rooms, 52 stairs, 12 doors and 7 gardens, set in a deer park 1,000-acre - but as "the largest. The story of this small manor that is very hidden in the middle of the city... . It has all the qualities of lasting peace; of tender stomach;
of glory and culture. It's sweet and respectful."The legend of the country house is fascinating but the authors are not sure to follow it; they can also question, satirize and subvert, as Noël Coward did when he rewrites Felicia Hemans: "The beautiful houses of England / how beautiful they are, / To show that the upper class / Always have the upper hand. " » Of course the country. The houses that appear in modern fiction are far from gentle and respectable. The Tallis family in McEwan's ugly Atonement - "under forty, bright orange brick, squat, baronial gothic, only to be condemned one day in Pevsner's essay, but he is one of his members". . “Hundreds Hall, in Waters' novel, is a run-down, haunted house - or so it seems - to poltergeists. About Corley Court of Hollinghurst's "Victorian Violent", with "paned-glass windows that blocked the fire, high ceilings that thwarted any attempt at heating, large trees and people's tables and chairs too much.” and the carved palm trees that fill the houses, suggestions and suggestions that the "unpleasant" and "terrible parts" may be part of its beauty are the owners asked sarcastically, desperate for a fashion change.
If the houses themselves are not good, the people who live in them are small. Stevens, the butcher of The Remains of the Day, may remain loyal to his boss Lord Darlington, but the reader exposes him as a Nazi sympathizer. The frozen Caroline in The Little Stranger feels more protective of her dog than that of her tormented child, and - like her war-torn brother, Roderick - is irrational when it comes to dealing with the rules. The Tallis family in Atonement, when 13-year-old Briony goes astray, are quick to identify Robbie - the cleaning lady's daughter - as a rogue, though the real culprit. from their own race.These four novels are more than country houses: Waters's plays with the conventions of ghost stories, McEwan's has a section on Dunkirk, Ishiguro's is a study of emotional repression, and Hollinghurst's. is, among other things, the inspiration of the textbook. And because they take real estate as their subject, they solve problems many of us know - from heritage and renovation to bad wiring. “Have you ever enjoyed the celebration of our middle class coming to the theme of home? » asked Margaret Schlegel of Mr Wilcox in Howards End. What he called an anniversary has now become a national obsession, the subject of endless television documentaries about buying and renovating homes. Like the real estate pages and estate agency windows with their multi-million pound houses, country house novels allow us to luxuriate in places we might never own – to linger in long galleries, to contemplate ancestral portraits and to explore the gardens and parks. And they love
the movie industry - Atonement and The Remains of the Day have become big-budget movies, and there's every chance that Little Stranger and (unrelated) Son of the Stranger will follow suit. But the motivation of these writers is not the prospect of a cinematographic contract. Nostalgia, aesthetics or attachment to privilege don't play a big role either. What attracts them to a country house is the space it offers for everything to happen under one roof; house fiction has many rooms, but country fiction has more rooms than most. It's also possible to play with ideas and motifs that go back centuries. The more flexible it is; in urban literature, things move slowly or not at all. Despite being cleverly edited, the same themes, characters and twists return again and again. "Of all the great inventions of the English," wrote Henry James, "of all the great things which have formed part of the value of the national character," wrote Henry its description, so that it becomes a brief example of their social wisdom, it is a well-organized, well-managed, well-filled house." Fear and Waugh also believed in the idea of alienation. Moreover, the idea that there is something quintessentially English about country houses ignores Russian dachas, French chateaux, Italian villas, Anglo-Indian mountain stations and the "big house" of the Protestant rise in Ireland. As a house, so is a book. In fact, Irish country literature is more than ours.