The decline of the country house after World War II is something that I have read about briefly in other books, so I was quite interested when I saw this book on Audible. The book was very well written, and featured details about lives of many individuals and their country houses. It was amazing the amount of disrepair that some of these houses found themselves in. One house had saplings and fungus growing from the walls! A lot of people found themselves selling off items from inside the houses, as well as surrounding lands. Fans of Downton Abbey would recognize this problem from the show when they were struggling to find a way to make the land pay for itself. I really enjoyed this book for the historical and societal implications, but the gossip that was included was also intriguing.