Amanda Herries

Thursday

Amanda Herries

A paean to the British passion for our very own ‘castles’

‘Phlogiston’ is an interesting, if obsolete, word. Of Greek origin, it referred to the ‘fire-making’ quality thought to be present in, among other things, the ashes gathered by London dustmen. In the mid-18th century these ashes were mixed with earth and even ‘excrements taken out of the necessary houses’ to create the vast numbers of bricks needed for the explosion of house-building taking place at the time in London and elsewhere. The dramatic rise in building is pivotal to this densely detailed observation of the British obsession with their ‘home’ and ‘comfort’ which, we’re told, Robert Southey describes as particularly English and untranslatable.

Thursday

Amanda Herries

Scotland’s top ten

It is no mean feat to produce a publication of the type that used to be described as ‘a coffee-table book’, devoted to the subject of great Scottish houses, and manage to find a fresh slant on a genre that has illustrated and described country houses for decades.  James Knox and his photographer, James Fennell, have succeeded in doing just that. Whilst I might wonder if the coffee-table is still a must-have piece of furniture there is no doubt that this book is a feast for the eyes. Images shot in natural light provide luscious accompaniment to the text which achieves an easy harmony of informative history with light-hearted family and personal references.

Saturday

Amanda Herries

Caroline’s back in town

The Sloane is dead — but long live the Sloane. Her mother, Caroline, and father, Henry — the original Hooray — may be in their natural retirement homes in the Shires or Scotland along with the family dog snug by the Aga in the cosy kitchen, but she, we now know, using her native skills, has burst out of her famous 1980s stereotype to adapt to the new order. It’s an amusing conceit, with enough truth for 20-year-olds to have a wry laugh at themselves. Twenty-five years ago, a series of articles written by that grandee of social observation Peter York, in the then vital directory of upper-middle-class social mores Harpers & Queen, identified the various not-so-exotic creatures whose centre of the Known World was Sloane Square.

Saturday

Amanda Herries

Not to the manor born

Six years ago I embarked on a little redecoration of my husband’s family house, over 200 years old in south- west Scotland. ‘Ah’, said a knowing friend from the Highlands, now a neighbour, who would soon embrace the same task, as we ripped up floorboards, struggled with ancient heating systems and filled skips; ‘ah’ she said, ‘the generational refit.’ It is the same exercise which lies at the heart of Belinda Rathbone’s well-observed description of ten years of similar effort near Arbroath in the Scottish Highlands, at her new husband’s ancestral home, a Georgian mansion called the Guynd.