Life in The French Country House - Softcover

A perceptive and witty account of upper-class French society through the centuries, showing how its setting - the chateaux, manoirs and gentilhommeries of the French countryside - evolved in concert with their inhabitants to create a way of life admired and emulated throughout Euorpe. We learn how different rooms were lived in and how their uses changed, about plumbing, lighting, heating, water supply, kitchens, stables and servant¿s quarters, about the evolution in taste and decoration to accommodate the waxing and waning fortunes of the aristocracy. Girouard quotes from letters and diaries, inventories and books of etiquette.

Mark Girouard is one of Britain's leading architectural historians and the acclaimed author of the bestselling Life in the English Country House, winner of the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize and the W. H. Smith Annual Literary Award, as well as Of Spirit of the Age, The Victorian Country House, The English Town and a biography of James Stirling. Mark Girouard currently lives in London, W11.