You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. Beautifully written and structured, Plumley’s writing is vivid and captures bucolic scenes perfectly.

A work of non-fiction, it was published by Atlantic Books in hardback and e-book on 2 June 2022 to wide acclaim and then released as an audiobook by W. Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal.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. With passion and precision, Gavin Plumley pushes the boundaries of memoir and scholarship and shows that the chronicle of a house can contain the grand history of a whole world as well as the sweet, urgent story of a life: all that intimacy within the vastness of historical time. A wonderful meeting of memoir and landscape, both rigorous and freewheeling, expansive and intimate, rendered in dreamy prose.

As Gavin traced Stepps House through various hands and eras, he saw a past emerge that resonates powerfully with our present. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. All this gleaned while he tried to establish the age of his Tudor-looking property, for which there was no definitive record. I almost felt that I had somehow been tricked into reading it by a “false description” given by the publisher and even those who had reviewed and blurbed it. 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.

What starts out as a straightforward house history morphs into something else, a wide-ranging meditation on place and past, taking in climate change, rural depopulation, the Reformation and folklore . I listened to the audible audio edition but it isn't on Goodreads yet and I can't find the asin number to add it. Corvus Atlantic’s commercial fiction list which includes women’s, historical, romance, sci-fi, crime and thriller. Those involved Protestants escaping mainland Europe and the consequent difficulties they had in integrating with the existing population.

For younger bookworms – and nostalgic older ones too – there’s the Slightly Foxed Cubs series, in which we’ve reissued a number of classic nature and historical novels. I don’t know if the filling stations are still disturbing the village, but if they are, there are plenty of compensations: a 14th-century church with, so the story goes, the marks of Cromwellian musket balls still showing in its west door; a spectacular pagoda-like bell house dating back to the 1200s; an early 16th-century market hall; 17th-century almshouses; and streets stacked to the gills with picturesquely wonky black-and-white houses.I assumed (like other reviewers) that this would concentrate on the house and surrounding areas of Herefordshire where author Gavin Plumley lives. His writing style is also top tier: the book is written in a way that is at once conversational, poetic and intellectual. The author is entitled to his opinion, but I bought the book for the house not an essay on modern climate change, criticism of government officials’ handling of the pandemic, or the merits of socialism. 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. There were moments which felt “socially preachy” and I find that annoying, especially when I already feel that the book was misrepresented to me.