People and Places

Lees-Milne became Country Houses secretary of the National Trust in 1936, when the NT still saw its role primarily as preserving landscape rather than buildings. Over the following five or so decades Lees-Milne succeeded magnificently in redressing the balance. In this characteristically delightful account, he tells of the fraught and intricate means by which fourteen major country houses passed into NT stewardship; an engaging mixture of autobiography,social history and architectural conservation. Scarce, especially in this condition.